By: Zac Lamas
This article orginally appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of BEEKeeping Your First Three Years
You can do a lot of beekeeping management when the weather is cold in the early Spring. Commercial beekeepers have to. We have too much work, and too little time to wait and only work bees on fair weather days. But isn’t this exactly what we have been told not to do? Bee books or beginner beekeeping classes are full of warnings about opening hives below certain temperatures and the risks of chilled brood.
Well, there is a lot we can do in cold weather, that doesn’t involve pulling out frames. In fact, by being a little creative, we can do a lot of management from early Spring onward without pulling a single frame.
Pollen Sub
I worked at French Hill Apiaries in Saint Albans, Vermont for several years. There we applied pollen sub in the early Spring (late March). Colonies were given pollen sub just once. We placed the pollen sub directly onto the Winter cluster. At this time of the year, the Winter cluster had migrated up to the top box where the last honey stores remained. We did observations while adding the pollen sub.
Early February in Whiteville, NC. The outside temperature is a raw 41 degrees. The bees are not flying, yet hive inspections can be done. Here I crack the colony and inspect the brood chamber. I am peering in between frames. By doing so I can see some capped worker brood. Drone larva are exposed on the top bars. We know the colony is queenright, brooding up, and can guestimate the overall strength of the colony by the cluster size. Part of the brood chamber is in the upper (unpainted) box, and the other part is in the white box. It is early in the season and this colony is just mediocre. I would not anticipate the bottommost (unpainted) box to have brood in it.
First, we visually inspected if the Winter cluster was in contact with honey stores. This was easy. All one has to do is peer past the top bars, on the outside frames and look for capped cells. If we did not see any, then we would check with our hive tool.
Just take your hive tool and prod it into the cells at the top of several frames. Doing this will puncture some cells. If honey is present, the hive tool should be slightly gooey. If the hive tool comes out dry, we will be concerned. We then do a heft test by tipping the colony to see if there is any weight to the colony. If not, we will give an emergency feeding of fondant. Colonies risk starving to death in the early Spring. They are rearing brood and quickly consume their Winter honey reserves. We can prevent starved colonies by doing this simple observation, and then prodding while adding pollen sub.
While adding pollen sub the Winter cluster is exposed. We take this opportunity to quickly grade the colony: Strong, medium, weak. This is not a perfect system. We are looking at how many frames are covered by bees, and the density of the cluster. The grading is simply relative to other colonies in the apiary. We write the total number of strong, medium and weak colonies down in the yard book before leaving the apiary. Each colony is marked in some way to indicate its strength. In my operation I write S,M or Won the back of the hive. Michael keeps bricks on top of his covers. A brick in the front is strong, middle is medium, in the back is weak. This is a simple, visual method to identify the relative strength of colonies.
It may not sound like much, but this is a simple way to organize our beekeeping for the remainder of the Spring. Soon all the colonies will have pollen sub added to them. The few colonies that were at risk of starvation will have been fed, and we will also have a tally of the condition of all the colonies in the business. Now we know how many strong and medium colonies we have, and how many weak colonies eventually need fixing.
Supering
The next time we return to the apiaries it will be to add honey supers. In some areas the Maple flows can be intense. We super at maples by adding two medium supers to each colonies. This has worked well in NY and Vermont, and also worked well for me in coastal North Carolina where the early maple flow can be intense. Strong and medium colonies will store maple nectar upwards in these supers. Keeping this nectar out of the brood chamber is good early swarm control. The queens are not restricted at all, and will expand their brood chamber as they see fit.
The drone brood here was exposed when the boxes were cracked apart. Believe it or not, this can be a very useful tool when judging a colony. This colony has both worker and drone brood, and is calm. It is queenright and brooding up early in the season. This is normal, and we expect to see it in all colonies in the apiary. When we open a colony that is not rearing drones, then we will use that as an indicator to check for other issues. Is the colony hungry? Did it Winter as a small cluster? With repetition we learn how to judge colonies without pulling frames.
Reversing
As soon as we finish supering, we begin reversing. (I follow the same routine whether in NC or with Michael in Vermont. Super, and then reverse two weeks later). We don’t have to remove frames to reverse. We are rotating the top brood box, where most of the resources are in the colony, and placing that box on the bottom board, and then placing the box that was originally on the bottom board, which has the fewest resources and should be the lightest, on the top of the brood chamber. The honey supers are then returned to the colony. An additional honey super is placed on the colony if needed.
Now remember how we marked colonies strong, medium and weak early in the season when we added pollen sub? And remember how that grading system was relative to colonies in the apiary? Well, now it’s a few weeks after pollen sub has been added. There have been a couple nectar flows. Some colonies are storing If a colony was weak in March when we added pollen sub, and then still weak when supers were added, and still small at reversal, do I really expect it to be bustling and strong by the main flow? No! It is weak. There is some issue with it. The colony told us it was weak during each of our three inspections. We will mark the colony to be requeened, and we won’t second guess our decision to requeen later in the season.
Here I am holding a box like in photo one, while snapping a quick photo. By peering through the frames we can see both worker and drone brood. We feel the weight of the box, telling us how many food stores are left. There are no indications of disease. Great! Why pull any frames, and risk rolling a queen? At this early time of the year, I got all the info I need.
At reversal we are really going to check a frame or two from these weak colonies. We want to first make sure there is no brood disease. Then we will inspect quickly for indications the queen is failing. Maybe she is laying inconsistently or starting to lay drones in her worker pattern.
Recap
Early in the season we are doing a lot of bee work, but we have removed very few frames for inspection. Instead we rely on simple observation cues to manage the operation. We compare the cluster size, activity at the entrances, weight of the supers, presence of drones, wax drawing, etc. relative to neighboring colonies. We expect to see a pattern in a colony’s strength from visit to visit. Strong colonies usually remain strong, weak usually remain weak. When a colony repeatedly under-performs it neighbors, we mark it for requeening.
Top view of a colony when adding pollen sub. Here I see the cluster on a moderate day is covering 9 frames. I peer as best I can through the frames and judge the density/ cluster of the bees. I then label the colony as strong, medium or weak. When I arrive at my next visit, I will make a similar assessment. These assessments made over time tell us the true condition of a colony. When a colony consistently underperforms in the early Spring visits, then we label it as a requeen.
This methodology really works for us because we have experience and repetition working many colonies. It is unfair to expect a new beekeeper or someone who only works one or two hives a year to be able to do the same type of management. Inspecting frames is an integral part of learning. So go and take out a couple frames when the weather is good. But I would also implore you to make whole box assessments first. We begin these inspections as we approach a hive. The bottom board can speak volumes. We learn what a strong cluster looks like first from a whole box perspective, and then we pull a frame. It’s a great way to judge a colony as a whole.
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Michael Palmer is an excellent beekeeper in northern Vermont. Much of this article is based off from management first learned working with Michael at French Hill Apiaries. The management can be adapted for other climates; like in central Maryland and coastal North Carolina where the author continues to keep bees.
