Guilfordbeekeepers.org

If you are new to beekeeping and wondering where to place your hives, current thinking is that you want as much sunlight on them as you can get. If you are in a city that has a bee ordinance, pay attention to your setback requirements and your shadows.

For me, February 19th represents the first day the sun rises on the north side of my next door neighbor's house. This means the start of my bees getting the earliest possible sunlight, given their position on my driveway pad.

Seems like a good excuse for a holiday to me.

I consider solstice to be "bee new year" and February 19th as my own "earliest full sun on the bees" holiday. I celebrated a day early when Rick Cockcroft and Tim Goetz stopped by for a little hands on work in the bees doing a couple of brood box reversals (putting the unoccupied deep super above the occupied medium super containing brood). Unfortunately, my best queen from last season (the bee tree queen) has played out, and I will be removing her and combining those bees with another hive in the near future. Sad news, but not enough to dampen my "holiday" spirits.

Just a reminder for the new beekeepers to pay attention to sun/shadow patterns. Current thinking is the more sun on a hive, the fewer small hive beetles to deal with. Older literature that suggests early morning sun and afternoon shade was written before we had to deal with the SHB.

Nature's reminder to me that despite the swings in temperature, Spring is coming.

Once the fog burns off, I can begin my personal pre-spring celebration. Small hive beetle issues have not gotten any better.

73 today. Time to check the hives and see what is needed to boost them till bloom time.

I plan to spend part of this personal bee holiday fighting the cold and taking a jar of honey to my neighbor who lives 2 doors down. Tomorrow is his birthday--he will be 103.

Celebrating the "holiday" with spent brewers yeast mix and honey water for the bees. My neighbor turns 104 tomorrow and I will take him another jar of honey to add to the one I gave him a few weeks ago.

Nancy Ruppert, one of our bee inspectors, said that she was seeing bees that were about 2 weeks ahead in build up/swarm preparation. If you were not at the GCBA meeting Tuesday and did not get the word, you may want to keep up with food stores and spring build up of hives.

My "celebration" will be a bit muted since my neighbor passed away last year at the age of 104. A better part of this "holiday" will be when one of our beginner class members comes to the house at 1:00 pm to get some hands on experience going into a hive or two.

I'm going to cap the celebration by putting my swarm lure hive out this afternoon.

I won't be opening hives today, but if weather permits, I may go ahead and put up my swarm lure hive today. Even though clusters are not as large as in past years, and blooms have been later to open, "data mining" from our swarms, cutouts, and trapouts section of the forum board tell me to have things ready before mid March. Somewhere out there in the neighborhood, some colonies may be building up faster than mine are and I want to be sure to have a good option available for them.

My swarm lure hive is already up because I never got around to taking it down. I did check and made sure that the frame of old dark comb (and the frames of undrawn foundation) were still in good shape.

L & B Apiaries helped me with this "celebration" by calling yesterday with a new supply of 5 gallon food grade buckets. I picked them up yesterday afternoon, and GCBA members can call me at 336 740-1703 and arrange to get them for free until this supply runs out.

I put my swarm lure hive up 2 days ago and yesterday the bees were bringing in a steady stream of pollen to my house hives. Most of my hives at the house are stronger than they have been the last 2 years at this time. I'll see what that means for swarm season.

I'll be celebrating without going into hives today. It does look like next week will provide good enough weather to open some hives and do a quick check on brood/drone rearing status. My bait hive went up on February 4th--more for something to do than in expectation of swarm season starting as early as it did in 2020.

I have seen bees working leatherleaf mahonia blooms for about 2 weeks even though the plants are not fully in bloom. Bees have been working David's flowering quince, gathering bright yellow pollen for about the same amount of time. A large number of the blooms appear to have been damaged by the cold, but bees are still working the ones that have opened. It is nice to see my home hives in full sun early in the morning though it will be awhile before the sun stays completely on the north side of my neighbor's house and my house. Bees have been consuming the sugar bricks with pollen substitute in them at a rate faster than I have seen before. I'll keep placing fresh ones in hives with shims at least until I see significant fresh white burr comb being drawn. I refreshed a bait hive on my driveway pad yesterday and will do the same for the one in David's dogwood tree in the next day or two.

I'll be celebrating my "holiday" by moving 3 of my smaller hives from home to Brown Summit today. My neighbor took down the dying dogwood tree that housed my bait hive for several years. I have a bait hive set up on my driveway pad since the location also seems to draw swarms. I have been putting drops of lemongrass oil on a convenient branch at the back of my yard hoping that if my bees do swarm, they will go to it. In about a week I'll add a small spray of Swarm Commander.

Given the mild winter we have been having I am seeing lots of SHB overwintering with the bees. I'll have Beetle Bee-gone sheets ready to put in hives at the next inspection.

I'm seeing dandelions, leatherleaf mahonia, and speedwell in bloom around the house. My neighbor's flowering quince is behind schedule because of damaged buds from the really cold night we had awhile back. At the Arboretum I have seen dead nettle, bush honeysuckle, and star magnolias in bloom. I did not walk to full Arboretum to see what else was happening.

The whole winter period this year seems to have been closer to "normal" from a temperature standpoint. I need to get busy repairing old equipment and cleaning up the old frames and stacks of supers sitting on stands in my back yard. Having more sun and earlier sun there makes it easier for me to get out there and work on equipment as bees fly by. I had a small tulip poplar topped to use as a post for a bait hive that will be about the same height as the old dogwood my neighbor took down last year. I don't know that it will be necessary given the success of the last couple of years having bees come to bait hives on my driveway pad, but I will give it a go.

I am planning on tending to my bees in Brown Summit this afternoon. I expect to be cleaning up some burr comb in the shims there, but probably nowhere near the amounts in last year's hives at this point.

So far, I have not seen emerged drones in hives and I have not seen neighborhood red maples in bloom. I have had outside bees coming to a deadout at the house. They are clearing out combs of sugar water "honey" and I am happy for them to take on that task. I'm going to set up 2 bait hives on my driveway pad today and put/keep a drop of lemongrass oil on the landing boards. I really don't expect swarming activity to start before mid-March (semi-educated guess), but want to see if/when scouting starts.

If the outside bees coming to my deadout are building up somewhere and do go into swarm mode, I wonder if the foragers will lobby for my driveway pad as a good location.

Small hive beetles are overwintering with my bees, but are smaller in number than last year; I'm not sure if that is because of the generally cooler winter we have had.