Early July? Last year's nuc was ready in late May, and they struggled to make enough honey for the winter. They ended up a deadout. How will the new hive make it through winter with so little time to prepare? I'm hoping the drawn comb from last year will give these new girls a big enough leg up.
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| Nuc: a mini bee hive, complete with queen, workers and drones |
Once I get enough hives going that at least one survives the winter, I can start producing my own queens, and reducing my costs. But if my hives die off every year, I'll never get there. I'll be stuck buying somebody else's nucs or chasing swarms.
Curious about why the bees are behind? Here's what Meghan has to say:
Why the bees are behind
If you have been following the weather, you all know that this has been a very cold spring, and everything is behind schedule. (Karen's note: climatologists at the American Public Gardens Association conference a couple weeks ago said that we should expect these "frozen springs" as a feature of climate change.) The bees all use environmental cues to build up and reproduce, and it appears that they are a good month behind where they were last year - and not just here, but all over the country. I'm working on getting queens and packages for work, teaching, and MSU from places like Florida, Georgia, and Ontario, and everyone I talk to is in the same place. Similarly, last year I was catching swarms in April, and this year I received my first call last week, so bees everywhere are having a slow build up this spring.
To raise good queens, we need two things: 1) drones and 2) good weather for mating flights. I can't get started with queen production until there are drones, or the queens can't get mated, and the drones hatched out weeks behind where they were last year. I started raising queens in the beginning of May, as soon as I saw mature drones in my hives, but the weather quickly got cold again, and the nucs were not able to keep the brood warm during the subsequent deep freezes, and were seriously set back, or the queen cell didn't make it. The second batch of queens emerged during a cold and rainy spell, and were (I believe), not well mated - they need to mate sufficiently to produce fertile eggs for their lifetime. Those that haven't been superseded by the bees have not started laying, so I don't think they are of sufficient quality to sell. I am currently in the third round of raising queens, and I am feeling optimistic. The bees are starting to swarm now, meaning that they themselves think that this is a good time to be raising queens and to split colonies - and the bees generally know best about these things. If you have been following the weather, you all know that this has been a very cold spring, and everything is behind schedule. (Karen's note: climatologists at the American Public Gardens Association conference a couple weeks ago said that we should expect these "frozen springs" as a feature of climate change.) The bees all use environmental cues to build up and reproduce, and it appears that they are a good month behind where they were last year - and not just here, but all over the country. I'm working on getting queens and packages for work, teaching, and MSU from places like Florida, Georgia, and Ontario, and everyone I talk to is in the same place. Similarly, last year I was catching swarms in April, and this year I received my first call last week, so bees everywhere are having a slow build up this spring.
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