I Have My Bees. What Do I Do Now?
1. Check your hives weekly! – There are many reasons and benefits to doing this:
2. Do a sugar roll test for varroa mites monthly!
Don’t rely on “well the hive seemed to be doing well and I didn’t see any”. You typically won’t see them (and by the time you do, it’s probably because they are so infested that the mites no longer had room to hide on the bees’ bellies), and often, it is your strongest hives that have the greatest infestation. The only way to know for sure how few/many you have is to do a quantitative test. And, by doing it monthly, you can monitor if that hive is keeping them under control or if they are suddenly exploding and need treatment.
Treat your hives for mites if they need it! – If you don’t, they will get weak and die. And, not only does that pose a loss for you, but other neighboring hives will rob them out and take the mites back to their colonies. Be a good neighbor.
3. Feed your new colonies!
Not just a little…feed them heavily from the day you get them until they are ready for winter. As stated elsewhere, the primary natural nectar flow in our area is typically only from mid-April to early/mid-June, and then it’s over. And, that’s assuming the conditions were right for it (not too little or too much rain, or storms at the wrong time, or too much wind….), and that your hives are in an area that had access to plenty of nectar. Only on occasion will we typically get a half-decent fall flow in certain areas. In the meantime, there is almost nothing out there for the bees. And, your new hives need to build-up both in numbers of bees, drawing of comb, and filling with food stores to get ready for winter. All those things require lots of food (both nectar/syrup and natural pollen or substitute) so that the queen continues to lay eggs, the workers rear the brood, the workers are inspired to draw wax comb, and they have something to fill it with. If you wait too long to start feeding, you won’t have the bees of the right ages with enough time to get ready for winter. While it is hard to say for sure how much they will need, our rule of thumb average is to budget roughly 100 lbs. of sugar per new colony to get ready for winter.
4. Don’t take honey from them the first year!
First off, they need it to attempt to get ready for winter. Secondly, if you’ve been feeding them, it’s not actually honey anyway. Even in later years, don’t take too much, and continue to monitor and be ready to start feeding later even if they did put a good crop of honey away as they will often eat it before winter and run out.
5. Give them space.
If you are feeding heavily, you need to make sure they don’t get crowded or “honey-bound”. Make sure there is always room in the brood chamber area for the queen to lay eggs and rear brood. Make sure that you put new supers with new foundation on as necessary so they don’t feel crowded and swarm. (We like to put foundation supers on in the summer and early fall for them to draw comb while we’re feeding sugar syrup, so that they have clean drawn comb the next spring to fill with honey during the nectar flow and are not then spending time/energy on trying to draw-out comb then.)
6. Give them ventilation.
We are firm believers that bees need plenty of ventilation provided through screened bottom boards and other miscellaneous holes that we routinely drill in our hives. In fact, we don’t insulate our hives and generally leave the screened bottoms and some of the miscellaneous holes open all through the winter to avoid moisture problems.
7. Reduce the Hive Entrance.
In order to limit robbing, reduce the entrance to between one to three inches. The stronger the colony, the larger the entrance can be. The smaller the entrance, the easier it is for them to defend.
8. Join a local organization, get a mentor (and later become a mentor) and never stop reading/learning all you can about your amazing bees!
You will enjoy having them more and they will reward you many times over.
- You’ll learn more about your bees and enjoy having them more. (Beekeeping is very therapeutic after a stressful day, and it’s a very addictive hobby the more you learn about them.)
- You’ll, hopefully, be able to spot signs of and attempt to avert swarming. [Note: Queen cells are developed and capped at 6 days, after which point the hive may swarm at any time up until the new queen emerges. Therefore, the weekly check on your hives is a good time to try to spot any newly developing queen cells. If you don’t check your hives but every couple weeks or month, you may never even realize that your hive swarmed and you have a replacement queen (or worse, have become hopelessly queenless).]
- You can more closely monitor things like food storage, brood production, signs of crowding, signs of robbing, general health of the hive, monitoring of small hive beetles and other pests/diseases, etc.
2. Do a sugar roll test for varroa mites monthly!
Don’t rely on “well the hive seemed to be doing well and I didn’t see any”. You typically won’t see them (and by the time you do, it’s probably because they are so infested that the mites no longer had room to hide on the bees’ bellies), and often, it is your strongest hives that have the greatest infestation. The only way to know for sure how few/many you have is to do a quantitative test. And, by doing it monthly, you can monitor if that hive is keeping them under control or if they are suddenly exploding and need treatment.
Treat your hives for mites if they need it! – If you don’t, they will get weak and die. And, not only does that pose a loss for you, but other neighboring hives will rob them out and take the mites back to their colonies. Be a good neighbor.
3. Feed your new colonies!
Not just a little…feed them heavily from the day you get them until they are ready for winter. As stated elsewhere, the primary natural nectar flow in our area is typically only from mid-April to early/mid-June, and then it’s over. And, that’s assuming the conditions were right for it (not too little or too much rain, or storms at the wrong time, or too much wind….), and that your hives are in an area that had access to plenty of nectar. Only on occasion will we typically get a half-decent fall flow in certain areas. In the meantime, there is almost nothing out there for the bees. And, your new hives need to build-up both in numbers of bees, drawing of comb, and filling with food stores to get ready for winter. All those things require lots of food (both nectar/syrup and natural pollen or substitute) so that the queen continues to lay eggs, the workers rear the brood, the workers are inspired to draw wax comb, and they have something to fill it with. If you wait too long to start feeding, you won’t have the bees of the right ages with enough time to get ready for winter. While it is hard to say for sure how much they will need, our rule of thumb average is to budget roughly 100 lbs. of sugar per new colony to get ready for winter.
4. Don’t take honey from them the first year!
First off, they need it to attempt to get ready for winter. Secondly, if you’ve been feeding them, it’s not actually honey anyway. Even in later years, don’t take too much, and continue to monitor and be ready to start feeding later even if they did put a good crop of honey away as they will often eat it before winter and run out.
5. Give them space.
If you are feeding heavily, you need to make sure they don’t get crowded or “honey-bound”. Make sure there is always room in the brood chamber area for the queen to lay eggs and rear brood. Make sure that you put new supers with new foundation on as necessary so they don’t feel crowded and swarm. (We like to put foundation supers on in the summer and early fall for them to draw comb while we’re feeding sugar syrup, so that they have clean drawn comb the next spring to fill with honey during the nectar flow and are not then spending time/energy on trying to draw-out comb then.)
6. Give them ventilation.
We are firm believers that bees need plenty of ventilation provided through screened bottom boards and other miscellaneous holes that we routinely drill in our hives. In fact, we don’t insulate our hives and generally leave the screened bottoms and some of the miscellaneous holes open all through the winter to avoid moisture problems.
7. Reduce the Hive Entrance.
In order to limit robbing, reduce the entrance to between one to three inches. The stronger the colony, the larger the entrance can be. The smaller the entrance, the easier it is for them to defend.
8. Join a local organization, get a mentor (and later become a mentor) and never stop reading/learning all you can about your amazing bees!
You will enjoy having them more and they will reward you many times over.