June 9
Up to a few weeks ago, it had been a very cool spring. It had seemed winter wasn’t going to let go, but it did and warmer temperatures arrived. We haven’t seen frost for weeks now ( touch wood).
Late May and June are always such busy months. There is gardens to prepare and plant, greenhouses to open up and get planted and lawns to cut. But it’s also a very busy time for the bees.
I had great intentions of getting all the inspections of the hives done early. But of course that didn’t happen. The weather would hold long enough to get one hive done….then it would start to rain or the winds would start and get cool. I am not sure I have left on their winter wraps this long before. One of my hives is still partially wrapped but for the most part they are done.
I did managed to check for swarm cells last week on my big hive. But didn’t find any, so it’s given me a bit of a breather. Tomorrow I have the whole day to do what I want. Which seems to be rare these days. So as long as Mother Nature behaves I can finish doing the last three inspections and removing attic boxes and candy boards. Yes some of them are still on. I know…they should of been off weeks ago.
June 14
So I finally got all the candy boards off and put away for a few months. I added extra boxes to the hives that needed it.
Hive one, which is one of the three hives that have wintered over three years now are bursting at the seams. I was blown away that they had already filled a deep super full of dandelion nectar. The dandelions were in great abundance this year and since we live in the country (some people call it the boonies) we only cut a small portion of our lawn and left the rest. It was a sea of yellow.
The weather this past week has been unstable, cool and wet. It almost seems everything is behind by a week or so. I snuck in to hive one, between a thunder storm to see if there was swarm cells. I was really hoping the full box of dandelion honey was capped so I could remove it. But they were still working on it. I had trouble lifting it off so had to use the old lady method of removing frame by frame till it was light enough. I really should get shallow boxes.
Still no swarm cells. But I got a new hive set up so we can take a better look once this weather settles. I also put up three swarm traps….just in case.
I check the weather daily, it’s just a thing I do after living in the bush in a somewhat remote area, years ago. Our weather is suppose to be improving by the weekend then “they” are calling for hotter than normal temperatures during July and August. So I will start to prepare to get things ready in my bee yard for that over the next week. Last year when we had that long stretch of extreme temperatures (for our area) I scrambled to figure out how to keep the bees cooler. So now I know, so I can prepare for it.
This is what I did last year during the “extreme” heat.
It wasn’t pretty but it worked. Over their honey supers I added my winter attic boxes (without the insulation pillow) which have a vet hole in it. Then I put on the inside cover and outer lid. I added a piece of styrofoam insulation to the top. I ratchet strap all my hives so I didn’t t have to worry about it blowing off. Before I did this my big hives were bearding on the front of the hives. As soon as I added the empty attic box, this helped a lot. I also handed two more water stations for a total of four. I had to fill them twice a day….not that they always needed it but I did anyways.
Well……that’s all for now. Bee safe during the upcoming hot temperatures. Happy National Pollinators Week 🐝💖
