Spring is almost and the fight is most over.

The temperatures are rising and your cluster is slowly breaking apart into the individual lively bees they once were. The job roles are starting to vary from "save the queen" back to cleaning, nursing, wax edifice, foraging and scouting.

As any worried beekeeper would be, you're probably wondering How are my bees doing right now? and How can I help them?

This can stir up an uneasiness and as soon equally the weather breaks into the 50s, I invite y'all to go bank check on them.

Second yr apiculture can bring on a whole new set up of challenges than the ones yous faced last twelvemonth. The most apparent of them all is supporting your bees through late winter and early spring.

Fluctuating temperatures can bring about timing issues. When to introduce things to your hive is just a crucial as how y'all introduce them to your hive. Giving leap bees sugar water can be more harmful than good. Feeding them pollen can outcome in famine. Performing certain Varroa Mite treatments tin can be ineffective.

This commodity focuses on the what, when and how to get the greatest starting time to 2d twelvemonth apiculture. To find out more about the challenges ahead, keep reading.

Feeding Dry out Pollen (January - Feb)

Feeding your bees pollen or a pollen substitute like Ultra Bee, MegaBee, or Bee-Pro is an of import step to giving your bees the greatest head start into early on spring.

While nectar is your bees' master source for carbohydrates, it is pollen that packs the dial when it comes to your bees' proteins, lipids, sterols, vitamins, minerals and certain carbohydrates. Pollen is admittedly essential for spring bees to become the nutrition they need to create a healthy hive.

According to a study on how your bees take in protein published in the Journal of Insect Physiology, pollen provides your bees with:

  • Nutritional reserves to stimulate brood rearing
  • Support while resisting pathogens such equally Deformed Wing Virus (DWV)
  • A longer lifespan
  • A more nutritious and college quantity of worker jelly to help larva grow potent

A different report, from the Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium (MAAREC) notes that, "In colonies with a lack of pollen, brood rearing is delayed until fresh pollen is nerveless from spring flowers, and these colonies usually emerge from winter with reduced populations." This suggests that pollen is crucial to your bees' diet when feeding bees in spring, or even as early as Jan. It will give them the all-time head get-go to early on spring blossom blooms and assistance them increase their population growth speedily.

While you lot may have used pollen patties to help your bees get through the fall, spring bees phone call for plainly dry pollen or a pollen substitute outside of the hive. The reason for this is so your bees can cull if they want to take the pollen or not. The terminal thing you want to practise is to encourage the bees to produce brood before the hive can handle it. If your queen lays eggs so prolifically that she fills up all the frames in her box with breed, then your bees will exist spread thin to try to keep the brood warm. A colony that is spread thin tin't cluster to go along themselves warm if there happened to be another common cold snap.

Another possible trouble with feeding your bees pollen inside the hive while beekeeping in spring is that more bees could be produced than your natural surroundings could support. This could lead to stress and famine within the hive. If this happens you'd be forced to feed your bees carbohydrate water early in the yr to keep up with the need.

This is why it's so important to let the weather dictate if your bees have admission to the pollen outside of their hive rather than placing it directly in their hive during Jan or February.

Here's a Pro Tip!

The best manner to feed your bees pollen, during tardily winter/early spring, is past leaving a pile of dry pollen or pollen substitute underneath a small rainproof shelter. A rainproof shelter could be every bit simple as turning a bucket on it's side or under any cover that would continue the pollen from getting wet and caking. In one case the pollen has caked, the bees don't seem to want information technology.

For some creative ideas on pollen feeders cheque out the video here from Jason Chrisman.

Early on Spring Inspection ASAP (February - April)

As soon as your neck of the woods finally gets a break in the weather, information technology'd be a practiced idea to get out to the bee yard and check on your bees.

You'll want to wait for a day that doesn't have current of air and has temperatures hovering around 55°F (13°C)degrees or in a higher place. On a day like that, you should have little to no fear that your brood would die from the cold while inspecting the frames. Even even so though, you lot'll desire to be relatively quick about your inspection.

During the early jump at that place are 4 chief activities that you'll exist doing:

  • Looking for Signs of Life (Click Here)
  • Checking for Your Queen (Click Here)
  • Feeding Bees in Spring (Click Here)
  • Deciding How to Get New Bees (Optional) (Click Here)

Looking for Signs of Life

Going through your first winter every bit a beekeeper can build upward a bit of anxiety. The long common cold months can raise questions like, Will my bees survive? Did I do everything I could to prepare them for the wintertime? Will I have to start over? All of this is uncharted territory for a new apiculturist, but no thing what happens -- larn from information technology and keep moving on.

When the weather finally breaks, one of the first things you'll be able to determine when inspecting your hives is if your bees accept survived the winter or not.

Your bees volition likely be in a cluster located at the top middle of your hive. This is the area in your hive that collects the most estrus.

When you crevice open the inner cover you should encounter them gathered there. If non, it is however possible that they may accept moved downward just a chip, and then take out a frame or two to check if they are at that place.

If your colony is nowhere to be establish, and so y'all may have had a late fall swarm or a dead-out.

A dead-out is a euphemism beekeepers use when their hive has died. The most common culprits are condensation, starvation or from getting too cold. These aren't the only reasons though. As a beekeeper, it would be benign for you to learn from what happened and to make up one's mind if in that location is annihilation you lot could do to change the outcome for next year. Here is a link to an commodity that describes how to determine the cause of expiry of your honey bee colony: How to Dissection a Beloved Bee Colony.

Ideally you desire a cluster that is equally large or larger than a grapefruit. At this size a colony can maintain enough rut to proceed any brood that may be laid warm. If you don't have this many or if information technology seems similar you lot've lost your bees, driblet down to the section in this article titled Deciding How to Get New Bees (Optional) (Click Hither). Don't surrender, we all lose our bees every now then.

Checking for Your Queen

Bees can survive without their queen. Peculiarly the fatter bees that the queen produces right before winter hits. These fatter bees take an extended lifespan. While normal bees would live 4 to vi weeks, these wintertime bees can terminal 4 to 6 months instead.

Unfortunately, despite your bees' best efforts, your queen will eventually die. On average, queens can alive between two to three years and sometimes that lifespan happens to end during wintertime.

Terrible timing like this tin can mean that your beehive can't save themselves. Normally the nurse bees would cull one of the larva that the queen recently laid to become the next queen. In the winter though, there isn't many (if any) larva to choose from.

To effigy out if she is yet effectually, you'll accept to get through a few frames to try to observe her.

If you observe your queen while inspecting your hive, fantastic! If not, yous have a few different options. You lot tin can social club a new queen; take a frame of brood from some other colony; combine hives; or await a week or two when the weather is dainty again and expect a 2nd time. To learn more on all your options you tin can visit our other article called: Where Should I Get My Bees?

One good sign that your queen has survived is that y'all run across brood existence laid. Although that is not a 100% confirmation that she is in the hive. Sometimes, you can have laying workers and y'all'll have to know the deviation.

Laying Workers

Sometimes worker bees can be "promoted" to lay brood eggs when the queen dies. This is more or less a last ditch effort for the genetics of the hive to survive and is not a long term solution. In fact, the "promoted" worker bees can merely lay male drone dearest bees every bit a manner to help the honey bee population at large -- they can't save the hive.

The tell-tale sign that you have laying worker bees is that you'll see multiple eggs in each jail cell. Knowing this can help you lot determine if your hive needs a new queen.

Hither's a Pro Tip!

Here's a quick summary of her findings. She says that the way to fix a laying queen issue is by taking frames of freshly laid worker brood (non drone breed) from a queen-right hive and putting them into the queenless hive. Over time this releases open brood pheromones that convince the laying workers to finish laying eggs. They then catechumen one of the upcapped brood cells into a supersedure queen jail cell. Once you have this happen, the hive is at present ready to accept a new queen whether yous let them make their own or buy one.

Feeding Bees in Bound

Even though the early on bound inspection is supposed to exist quick, exist certain non to miss this crucial step.

While you lot're lifting frames to bank check for the queen and estimating how large of a cluster yous still take, check out your bee's nutrient stores.

March and April are notorious for having unpredictable dearths that tin starve a hive. Many hives yet have to rely on the honey they have stored away. So, unless you left enough love on your hive, you might detect yourself needing to give them a little extra food.

To check their food stores, you can simply await to run into if the food you placed in their hive when you were preparing for winter is still there. Another style to rapidly bank check for food is to look at the tops of their frames to see if at that place is whatsoever capped honey (meet picture).

If yous end up determining that your hive does non accept enough food, you'll need to add some. We suggest using the Mountain Army camp Saccharide Method for feeding bees in spring.

The Mountain Army camp Sugar Method


For late winter/early leap feeding, we recommend The Mount Camp Sugar Method. This method uses dry sugar every bit a way to feed your bees. Dry out sugar is an excellent bee food for the winter months and early jump because it doesn't freeze up. No affair how common cold it gets the bees will be able to chip abroad at these tiny granules and feed on them.

Another do good of using dry sugar is that it is able to pull wet out of the air and soak information technology upwards like a sponge. Wet can be an absolute monster when it comes to whether or not your bees survive wintertime.

Moisture has a tendency to gather under your inner embrace and plow into freezing common cold water. One time this h2o has gathered, it drips down on to the cluster below. Much like humans can suffer hypothermia from getting wet in the cold, the bees tin't handle beingness wet in the wintertime'south cold and unforgiving environment either.

Here'southward a Pro Tip!

Hither's a quick pace by step informative video from Kamon Reynolds - Tennessee's Bees on how he does the Mountain Camp Sugar Method.

  1. Offset he cracks open the hive and inner comprehend
  2. And then places some paper down directly on the elevation frames (some people spray the newspaper with a little sugar h2o to go along it weighed down and to help the bees chew through information technology)
  3. Side by side, he slowly pours a mountain of dry sugar on top of the paper
  4. Spreads the sugar to form an even layer over top of the paper
  5. Then he sprays it with a picayune water and closes up the hive

Deciding How to Become New Bees (Optional)

No apiculturist wants to detect themselves in a situation where they have to guild new bees, simply it happens.

If y'all lost your bees over the winter, information technology'due south best to figure out how you lot're going to get your jump bees this year as before long every bit possible. Many apiaries will start taking orders in January and February.

If you're going to place an order, phone call as before long equally you lot tin. Apiaries will only have a express stock and it's offset come up first serve.

After you've placed your order, they'll likely ask y'all when your frost date is. The apiary volition then wait to deliver your bees after they've congenital up their populations a chip and the frost date has passed. This gives your bees the best and safest chance of survival.

There are 5 main ways to get a agree of a new hive:

  • Finding a Swarm (Click Here)
  • Baiting a Swarm (Click Here)
  • Splitting a Hive (Click Hither)
  • Buying a Packet (Click Here)
  • Buying a Nuc (Click Hither)

Finding a Swarm

The hardest part almost finding a swarm is actually finding the swarm. Once you've found them though, information technology's actually not also difficult to call up them, take them home, and install them into your own beehive.

Bees that don't have a permanent domicile are more than docile and gentle than any other kind. They generally aren't aggressive considering they don't take to protect their beloved. Although yous probably won't get stung, we would all the same recommend wearing a bee suit to calm your fretfulness if this is your first time.

To observe out why bees swarm, how to discover a swarm, and how to catch it keep reading about this in our full length article: Where Should I Get My Bees? - Finding a Swarm (Click Here).

Baiting a Swarm

Baiting a swarm is very similar to finding a swarm. It can exist a little more hard to do, costs a fiddling more than in materials, and takes just as much luck to result in obtaining a swarm. Afterwards you're all set upwardly though, it takes very little endeavour, y'all don't have to get out your holding to catch a swarm, your bait box should last for years, it'due south passive & ongoing throughout the swarming months, and could take hold of multiple swarms given plenty time.

For more on where to bait a swarm, how to make a bait box and the kinds of baits you can use read more at: Where Should I Get My Bees? - Baiting a Swarm (Click Here).

Splitting a Hive

Virtually beekeeping experts propose new beekeepers to get two beehives instead of just one.

Amongst many benefits, having two hives allows you to have some hive insurance. If i hive dies, y'all're able to carve up your other hive into two colonies.

Yous can as well split up a hive from someone you know who has a hive. This selection tin can exist complimentary if you know a beekeeper who is willing to give you some eggs to start your own. Well-nigh of us aren't then lucky though.

Read more on how to split 1 hive into 3 at: Where Should I Become My Bees? - Splitting a Hive (Click Here).

Ownership a Parcel

This is the first choice on the listing that you'd have to purchase.

Ordering a package of bees, should ensure that yous'll receive your jump bees this twelvemonth (unless the apiary yous choose fails to fulfill the guild).

A bundle of bees usually comes in a wooden box that is about the size of a shoe box. This box holds 3 pounds of worker bees, a queen in a queen cage, and a can of saccharide syrup for the bees to eat while traveling by mail or car.

Where Should I Become My Bees? - Buying a Parcel (Click Hither) will explain to yous what you can expect and how to install a package.

Buying a Nuc

The final choice on the list is to purchase something called a Nuc. This is the least risky way of obtaining your bees and is what we recommend for all beekeepers to do.

Nucs, short for Nucleus, come up with 5 drawn out frames that are total of breed, a queen, and a few pounds of bees.

Buying a Nuc means that you lot're buying an already established miniature hive.

The most mutual style that Nucs are sold are in 5 frame increments (encounter moving picture).

To read more than about what yous'll receive in a five frame Nuc, how to install one and more, bank check out the whole commodity at: Where Should I Get My Bees? - Buying a Nuc (Click Hither).

Mid Jump Inspection (March - June)

Mid jump is a time when it's warm plenty during the days that you lot tin can open the hive and do a thorough inspection. The temperatures outside are in or higher up the mid 50s°F (nigh 10°C) during the day and no longer dip below 23°F (-five°C) degrees at dark.

At this fourth dimension of year, you'll hands be able to run into your busy bees hustling around the hive. The flowers are flowing and there'south plenty of pollen and nectar ripe for the taking. Information technology's warm out, but at that place is still a fear of the occasional cold snap or early nectar dearth.

If yous're non sure if you're in mid bound yet, you can always check out wunderground.com/history (Click Here) to see what the temperatures were like around this time last year in your area. Another option is to cheque the current year's Farmer's Almanac or Google for a semi-accurate prediction.

If y'all are in mid spring and aren't only in the middle of an early oestrus wave, and then in that location are four important aspects to do at this time of year:

  • Count Your Varroa Mites (Click Here)
  • Perform a Varroa Mite Treatment (Click Hither)
  • Sugar Water in Spring (Click Here)
  • Medicate Your Bees (Click Here)

Count Your Varroa Mites

Varroa Mites take get the bane of beekeeping. Like ticks on a dog, they latch onto your bees until they find their adjacent victim.

Without a doubtfulness your bees need a good dose of Varroa Mite treatment in mid winter as well equally in early to mid spring. Although in mid wintertime you're limited to doing a 'blind' treatment (no count) because it'd be a bad idea to open the hive, the early to mid spring fourth dimension menstruum is a piffling unlike. Beekeeping in spring, where the daily temperatures are well over 50°F (10°C) degrees, ways yous can make time to do a Varroa Mite count and treatment without harming the bees.

Many beekeepers wonder, Why not skip this step? Why should I bother to practise a Mite Count if I know my bees need a treatment?

These are practiced questions on the surface, but mite counts can give you lot long term data for your bees. Doing a mite count before eliminating these little suckers can assist you know which hive is least vulnerable to them. Many beekeepers will intentionally brood and divide hives from queens that produce bees that are the most resistant to mites.

When your bees are resistant to mites it means that they have developed a addiction of cleaning their sisters by, most often, biting off the legs of the Varroa Mites. This training behavior can be found in sure colonies and should be rewarded with passing on their genes to the side by side generation.

If after doing a mite count yous find that one beehive has significantly less Varroa Mites than another, you'll desire to continue that in mind in the future.

Then after noting the count, go ahead and treat them.

The Carbohydrate Shake Method

One incredibly affordable method of getting an accurate count of Varroa Mites is to use the Carbohydrate Shake Method. In this technique you'll utilise powdered sugar to divide the Varroa from their victims. The powdered saccharide is nearly harmless to the bees, merely will find it'south way into the knees/joints of the Varroa Mites. Once their joints are locked upwards, the Varroa Mites fall off the bees. This gives you an opportunity to count them and become a good thought of how many mites you take for every 300 bees.

Some experienced beekeepers would rather use rubbing alcohol or starting fluid to remove the fiddling varmints. These two options give you a more authentic count, but will kill the 300 or so bees that you're testing. Beekeepers who apply this method encounter the 300 bees as insignificant compared to the tens of thousands they volition take saved through accurate testing. It'southward upward to you to decide what you'd like to use.

Here'due south a Pro Tip!

This helpful video from Louisiana State University'south AgCenter demonstrates the fashion to exercise a Mite Count using the Sugar Shake Method.

Take the number of mites you counted and divide information technology by 300, and so multiply that past 100. This will equal the percentage of mites y'all have in your beehive. If it is more iv%, you have a mite problem and will demand to take care of it.

If you notice that your mite count is high, read on to the next section to see some ways to fix the result.

Perform a Varroa Mite Treatment

Information technology'due south likely the concluding time you lot did a Varroa Mite treatment was dorsum in Jan. In that mid winter mite handling you weren't able to open the hive, and then you were limited to doing a blind (no count) treatment using the Oxalic Acid Vaporization (OAV) method. Although the OAV method is phenomenal for January when there is no brood in the cells and you lot can't open up the hive, spring time offers quite a few more treatment options. To learn more most the OAV treatment method and how to do it y'all tin can check out our article called: Wintertime Beekeeping: Treating Varroa Mites & Feeding Bees In Winter (Click Here).

Although OAV is great for Jan, when it comes to the early to mid spring treatment we'd recommend using Apivar. Feel free to practice your own research on what would work best for you though.

Why, When & How to Use Apivar

Apivar is an extremely versatile and constructive handling against Varroa Mites. Listed below are some of the many benefits.

  • Apivar is slap-up for early on spring because information technology isn't temperature sensitive. If it gets as well cold or too hot it doesn't matter. The only caveat to this is that the treatment simply works if your bees tin come into physical contact with the strips first. This is why it's not so smashing in winter when your bees are in a constant cluster
  • While Mite Away Quick Strips (MAQS) can pause your queen's rearing cycle and has been known (in rare occasions) to even kill your queen, Apivar won't mess with her brood rearing at all. This is very important for the spring build up
  • You likely simply used OAV a few months ago and alternating between medicines can forestall Varroa Mites from becoming resistant to the treatments
  • The 42 days of Apivar are far more than effective overall than the harsh seven 24-hour interval catamenia of a MAQS treatment
  • Apivar is very rubber for the bees, brood and humans to utilise.
  • Apivar is user friendly while MAQS tin cause problems if you lot don't apply it right

Hither's a Pro Tip!

The Honey Bee Wellness Coalition strives to bring beekeepers, growers, researchers, government agencies, and many other groups into a unified conversation on improving the health of honey bees.

In this video, they cover how and when to use Apivar to help control the Varroa Mite population.

Sugar Water in Spring

If you lot're reading this article, you likely fed your bees sugar water at some bespeak last year. If you didn't and then I'd point you lot over towards The Ultimate Guide to Feeding Bees Carbohydrate Water (How to Make it & More than).

Most apiaries deliver their bees after the last frost appointment, so last year when you lot got your bees it was probably warm enough that you didn't accept to worry about your sugar water freezing. I difference this time effectually is that while second year apiculture you have to wait to feed them sugar water until the temperatures won't dip below 23°F (-5°C) degrees.

Equally temperatures become warmer throughout the leap, your night time temperatures will eventually stay above 23°F (-5°C) degrees. Even though the temperatures are below 32°F (0°C), the sugar syrup won't freeze because the sugar prevents it from doing so. Information technology's more or less like a sugary slushy until it hits 22°F(-5.5°C) degrees. Once this temperature is met, the syrup turns into a solid block of ice. An ice block is useless and unsafe to your hive. The action of freezing water expands the liquid and can break the jar information technology's contained in.

Additionally, you wouldn't desire to put sugar h2o on your hive in the cold because your hive can too end upwardly with more moisture in the air -- which is exactly the opposite of what yous want to exercise when temperatures are however cold. Hypothermia is a real threat to bees.

Some other thing to keep in mind is that the bees won't swallow the sugar h2o unless temperatures are in a higher place fifty°F (10°C). So it's not a good idea until your area's daytime highs are predictively over fifty°F (10°C) anyways.

Yous can go on to feed your bees until they naturally end taking it in* or you are prepare to add a honey super to your hive. At this fourth dimension, the bees are pollinating the plenty of other nectar choices that are bachelor to them.

*If yous bought or caught a new colony this year, you'll want to continue feeding them syrup for most of the year. They have a lot of comb to describe out and until they stop, they'll need as much sugar syrup as they tin get.

Here'south a Pro Tip!

Sugar h2o is an incredibly uncomplicated syrup to make. Depending on the fourth dimension of year, beekeepers will switch back and forth betwixt feeding their bees a thin syrup (ane:1) and a thick syrup (2:i). Many beekeepers similar Frederick Dunn, the creator of a highly educational YouTube channel, believe that giving their bees a sparse ratio of 1 part h2o to 1 part saccharide (by weight) is the almost beneficial for bees to build honeycomb with.

As bees make more than honeycomb, the queen can then fill the cells with eggs. This increase in worker bees will snowball (exponentially grow) their wax building efforts because one of the first roles that immature worker bees have is to build wax. At this young age the worker bees are at their elevation when it comes to the amount of wax rummage they can build. This population nail of wax builders eases the high demand for more existent estate past drawing out more frames of comb.

Interestingly plenty, bees seem to know how to capitalize on periods of high nectar flow. This is the exact reason why most swarms happen in the bound time. It'south because in that location is plenty of nectar to help give a new colony a head beginning to building their new dwelling.

Once you lot've started feeding your hive to help them produce wax, it might exist a skillful idea to untilt your hive. Bees employ gravity to straight their comb building. If your hive is tilted, it might not produce the almost even wax. This is just an pick, if yous don't untilt your hive now, you lot can wait until after the final frost when there is on average less rain anyways. Read more near this beneath in the section called: Untilt Hive (Optional) (Click Hither)

Medicate Your Bees

Almost medications that you should give your bees are slipped into their sugar h2o. This is the main reason why you're waiting until mid spring to give it to them.

Fumagilin-B

Employ Fumagilin-B in your first feeding. This is a medication for one of the most common diseases that leap bees get, Nosema.

Nosema is a sickness, much like dysentery to humans, that bees get when they take parasites in their digestive tract. When your bees have it, y'all'll notice streaks of yellow and brownish on the outside of the hive.

This medication should exist proactive, not reactive.

While medicating, follow the instructions on the bottle. Nearly beekeepers add Fumagilin-B to the starting time sugar syrups of the year. Some beekeepers become every bit far as to spray the medicated syrup direct on the bees because, like humans, the bees volition avoid taking their meds.

Dearest B Healthy

Another helpful medication yous can look into is Honey B Healthy.

This nectar substitute is equanimous of the right blend of lemongrass and spearmint essential oils. These oils are said to assistance bees in many ways. Spearmint is something that Varroa Mites tend to avoid while lemongrass attracts bees to it.

Honey B Salubrious mentions how their solution can help calm honey bees when used as a spray. They as well say that information technology can aid your bees build wax on plastic foundation. This would encourage your bees to draw out directly and even foundations.

Afterward Frost Engagement Inspection (March - July)

The Last Frost Appointment of your neck of the forest should be circled in red on your calendar.

Normally this frost date is seen as the mean solar day that yous tin can constitute your vegetables without fearfulness of losing them to common cold conditions. For beekeepers this means the long hard winter is over and we can finally take a well deserved deep sigh of relief.

Once your surface area has hit this date there are a number of tasks that you lot can do to help out your bees.

To figure out your last frost date, you tin utilise this map to get an boilerplate date. You can besides find it in the electric current twelvemonth'south Farmer's Almanac or but Google it.

The tasks you lot're waiting to do after the last frost include:

  • Remove Insulation (Click Here)
  • Untilt Hive (Optional) (Click Here)
  • Reverse Hive Bodies (Optional) (Click Hither)
  • Remove Ventilation (Optional) (Click Here)
  • Alter to Screened Bottom Board (Optional) (Click Hither)
  • Receive New Bees (Optional) (Click Here)

Remove Insulation

When your hives are insulated, whether information technology be tar newspaper or Styrofoam, it's much like they're wearing a winter glaze. These coats are keen for the wintertime, but non for warmer weather.

Now that we're well into jump, your hive is ready to shed it'south heavy glaze and start regulating information technology's ain temperatures.

Leaving on the insulation would be a terrible idea. Information technology'southward pretty obvious when a colony is overheating. They'll either exist fanning or anonymous exterior of their hive.

You'll take a much more productive hive if yous take the insulation off once it starts to get warm plenty at night after the last frost date.

Untilt Hive (Optional)

Tilting your hive is an of import step to do during your winter prep. Like a well congenital roof and gutter organisation on a business firm, tilting your hive keeps the water from puddling on/in the hive. This keeps the moisture level in the hive low.

As we mentioned before, bees can be susceptible to hypothermia, and then nosotros need to keep moisture out of the hive whenever possible.

Some beekeepers keep their hives tilted all year long, peculiarly if they alive in an area that rains constantly.

The reason you lot might untilt your hive is because your bees are building more than rummage during the leap and summertime. Bees use gravity to direct their comb building. If your hive is tilted, it might not produce the most straight and fifty-fifty wax.

Reverse Hive Bodies (Optional)

During the winter months, the bees ordinarily hunt the heat and end up in the height deep box of the hive. This tin can leave the lower deep mostly empty. Since bees piece of work their fashion upwardly a hive all summer long, many beekeepers recommend that you opposite your bee boxes to outset them at the bottom of the hive.

Doing this ways taking both bee boxes off of your bottom lath and making your top box your lower box and vice versa.

Hither's a Pro Tip!

Hither'southward a video of how Kamon Reynolds - Tennessee's Bees reverses hive bodies. He notes that about of the time you'll find yourself with a very good for you looking bottom deep box. In these cases, there is no need to contrary hive bodies. It's but about 25% of the time that he finds himself having to reverse them.

While the boxes are off you can make clean and scrape the bottom lath or alter the board out for the summer fourth dimension screened lesser boards. Nosotros'll mention more than about screened bottom boards below (Click Here).

The last thing yous might want to do while the boxes are off is to flip your Entrance Reducer to the larger opening, prepare for the summer months.

Remove Ventilation (Optional)

This stride is optional considering some beekeepers like ventilation in their hives all year long. Others, don't. When it comes to ventilation their are two schools of thought.

ane. The Beekeeper's Perspective

This schoolhouse of thought come up from the fact that beekeepers have taken their bees out of the natural habitat that they would have chosen for themselves. Because of this, people who come up from this perspective believe that they have to help the bees overcome the manmade problems that their manmade boxes have created.

To aid the bees out, these beekeepers volition add ventilation through pinnacle entrances or screened bottom boards.

2. The Bee's Perspective

The 2d schoolhouse of idea comes from trying to replicate what a bee would cull equally it'southward natural habitat. In this scenario you tin can expect at the kind of places that colonies like to choose every bit their own homes.

Their choices will differ depending on the natural climate around them.

More than often than not, they choose to live inside the hollow of a tree. This provides maximum climate control and protection.

If a colony chooses to move into a hollow, they will walk around the entire cavity and make full every hole with propolis or comb to keep the current of air flow downwards.

From this bespeak of view information technology would make sense to shut up all of the ventilation through using solid lesser boards and archway reducers. This would permit the bees to regulate their own climates within their own hives.

For more on these two perspectives and where bees similar to live, you tin read our total article: x Factors When Considering Where to Identify a Beehive (Click Here).

Change to Screened Bottom Board (Optional)

Screened lesser boards can aid create a expert amount of circulation that starts from the bottom of the hive. If you're looking at ventilation from the apiculturist'south perspective we talked well-nigh before so it'due south likely you'd want to trade out your solid bottom board for a screened 1.

Screened bottom boards can be especially great in states where the temperatures are extremely hot. Similar opening a window on a hot 24-hour interval, they go along the inside of the hive cooler and forestall the bees from having to bristles on the outside of the hive. This can create a more than productive hive.

When bees beard, they are cooling downwardly the hive past reducing the population on the inside. Bees like to have a constant temperature of 95 in the hive and so when it'south hot exterior, information technology can hands go hotter inside.

Below the screen is a slide in plastic board that will catch the varroa mites that fall. On this platform you can smear a trivial coconut oil, Crisco, or spray some pam on it. Doing so will have the Varroa Mite and Pocket-sized Hive Beetles (SHB) stick to it. This allows you to count the mite drop rate and keep surveillance on how many pests y'all have in your hive.

Screened Vs Solid Bottom Boards

Pros to Screened Bottoms:

  • Creates ventilation
  • Prevents condensation
  • Allows you lot to trap and monitor pests
  • In hotter states, can brand bees' lives easier by cooling down the hive

Cons to Screened Bottoms:

  • In colder states, can make bees work harder at heating up the hive
  • Can diffuse the pheromones of the hive and brand advice more hard
  • Wind chill factors can freeze hives
  • Tin allow dew from grass to rise into hive


Hoover Hives Wax Coated Screened Bottom Board

Pros to Solid Bottoms:

  • Keeps pheromones in the hive to make improve advice
  • From bee'due south perspective it is the closest to a natural hive
  • Can prevent deadly wind chills from making their manner into the hive
  • Dual purpose, tin be turned upside downward to utilize built in mouse guard
  • Can pb to earlier brood production

Cons to Solid Bottoms:

  • In hotter states, can brand bees piece of work harder to cool down the hive
  • Should exist cleaned annually to prevent build up


Hoover Hives Wax Coated Solid Bottom Board

Receive New Bees (Optional)

The twenty-four hour period has finally come! Your new bees are here!

As you already know from last yr. Receiving your leap bees is a very exciting twenty-four hours.

One important thing to remember is to feed your bees sugar h2o when they make it. Some packages don't have nutrient sources for them and they're living on their dearest within the frames. To easily feed them sugar h2o, put the syrup into a spray bottle and spray the mass of bees -- but don't spray them so much that you have soggy bees.

Also, delight have your new beehive ordered, delivered and ready up long before your new bees make it. This can forestall a lot of headaches. The terminal thing y'all want is to accept a bunch of bees, but nowhere to put them.

Here'due south a Pro Tip!

This concluding tip is from Galena Farms in our other commodity: What Good Are Queen Excluders? (Click Here).

This technique requires yous to set up your hive in a piddling different way and then y'all're probably used to.

Before putting your bees in the hive, you'll want to put the queen excluder that came with your hive at the lesser of your hive below their brood box, only in a higher place the bottom board (run into picture). Putting a queen excluder hither allows the worker bees to exit the hive and orient themselves to find pollen or nectar, but contains your queen inside the brood box. This tin can prevent your hive from swarming right away.

If you have a height entrance in your hive, you'll desire to temporarily close this off too.

In a few days, your queen will get-go laying brood there. Once she's laying eggs, you know she'due south at that place to stay and y'all tin can remove the queen excluder.

In Conclusion

As you've learned here, second yr beekeeping is full of unique challenges that revolve around timing.

The early spring inspection should exist a quick bank check for signs of life and your queen, seeing if they'll survive on the food sources they have left, and deciding how to become a hold of new bees if yous have to.

Mid spring means information technology'southward time for your kickoff thorough inspection of the yr. Information technology involves counting your mites and starting your jump bees on a handling regimen. Mid spring likewise has warm enough temperatures that yous tin get-go feeding them sugar water and giving them their meds.

Once the last frost date hits, you've completed your total first year of beekeeping and it opens up a variety of tasks you tin can perform. Mainly taking off the insulation and deciding how much ventilation you want to keep for the twelvemonth. At this time you could likewise opposite hive bodies and receive your new bees.

I hope y'all put into practice much of what this article mentioned. Doing so volition give you the greatest head outset to second year beekeeping.

Good luck to you lot all!

Keep On Beekeeping On!

-Lane