The weather has been warm and the bees flying out and hopefully finding the first pollen from Crocus, Witchazel, and Skunk Cabbage if any of these are nearby. You may be wondering, should I remove the wraps from my hives, feed, reverse boxes, inspect?

So, lets think about where we are in the season right now. I am certainly ready for it to be Spring. But, in truth, there could be a cold snap still before Spring settles in for good. It is not unheard of to have snow in March. We have to be careful to not get carried away with a warm day or two. I am not taking my wraps off my hives for a couple more weeks I am thinking. Maybe the end of March or the first week of April. It will depend on the weather forecasts. I can’t give you a date, but, packages are arriving first week of April, so, I am thinking they will be off by then.

I am feeding most of my hives right now. I had bees up at the top, so I went ahead and put winter patties on them. There is a picture above of one of my hives with winter patties on it. Winter food is solid food. Winter patties, fondant, candy boards, sugar are what you feed in winter. Now is a good time to add a small piece of pollen patty too, to help the bees build-up, and tide them over on cold days when they can’t get out and forage. This may not be necessary if you had a well-established hive with lots of pollen in it last fall, but, it can’t hurt. Do be aware that Small Hive Beetles (SHB) love to breed in pollen patties, however. If there are SHBs in your hive and you put in a great big pollen patty and leave it in for a couple of weeks, you may just make a whole colony of SHBs. I like to put in a small piece and then take it out and replace it in a week with a new piece. By doing this, I take out any SHB eggs and larvae before they can mature enough to crawl out and pupate in the ground. Make sure you bag and properly dispose of that old pollen patty piece and not just throw it on the ground.

It is too early to feed sugar syrup yet, but, I think in another couple of weeks I will be doing this too! Just have to wait until the night temps are not too cold. Of course when the packages come in, all of those will be fed syrup as soon as they are installed. They need that to build the wax combs.

These few nice days provide an opportunity to take a peek down into your hives and see where the cluster is and how big the population is. You can take a frame or two out of the top box and peek down into the second box down without removing wraps. You don’t want to do a full inspection yet. It is too disruptive and you don’t want to chill the brood or risk damaging the queen. Replacing her now is near impossible. So, in most cases, it is better to wait before looking as long as you can see a nice cluster of bees from the top. In a couple of weeks you will be able to do all of this.

I had a dead out in my apiary and I hadn’t broken it down yet. Today I saw bees coming and going from it. It hadn’t come back to life, it was being robbed out! That would be a problem because I want to put a package into equipment on that hive stand in a few weeks. So, I got busy taking it apart and storing it away. If I had let the bees rob that hive, not only will the new package not have those resources, but, they will immediately be under attack by robbers who are used to robbing at that location. So, it was important to get that hive stored away ASAP.

Everyone wants to help their bees build up so they can take advantage of the nectar flow when it starts in earnest in May, and feeding them a little now is one good way to stimulate that growth. Making sure they have room to grow is also a way to stimulate build up. It is still a little too early to reverse boxes yet, though. If you do that now, you could disrupt the colony by moving the brood down to the cold bottom of the hive. Better to be patient. You definitely don’t want to split the brood and lose some because it got chilled. Some beekeepers never reverse boxes and their bees build up just fine. It is a choice. But, doing it wrong or too early can be more damage than not doing it at all.

In summary, continue supporting your bees with winter food until it is warm enough in a few weeks to feed sugar syrup, and get ready for the season change coming up fast! Get your equipment ready if it isn’t already. Check supers and scrape frames and boxes if it isn’t done yet. Paint what needs painting and be prepared. Just don’t jump the gun and do more harm than good! Enjoy watching those bees bring in the first pollen and pay attention to the buds on the trees. Spring is just around the corner! –Grace