May Bee Calendar - What's Happening Inside the Hive

What’s Happening Inside The Hive?

In May and June you and the bees are rewarded, or disappointed, by how well you prepared for the honey flow. You may also be busy keeping up with your bees. Serious beekeepers do not take long vacations in May.

If your bees are healthy, everything happens this month. The hive is full of young bees, the weather is almost perfect, and honey plants are blooming everywhere. The queen is laying eggs day and night, often over 1000 daily. There are now enough bees to take care of all the brood. The hive is making honey very quickly, even several pounds daily. If the bees need to make wax they will do this quickly by building onto foundation in your frames or by filling in empty spaces with burr comb. Drone production increases greatly and many drones fly out on sunny afternoons in search of the mating areas.

Swarming becomes a very important factor. May is the ideal time for a colony to reproduce, and most colonies will produce “swarm cells”, or queen cells that will mature in time for swarms to issue from the hive. There are three reasons to keep your bees from swarming : (1) Your hive will be weakened and the potential for honey production much less; (2) Your queen will be replaced by a daughter queen which may not be as good as the original; and (3) Your swarming bees can be a nuisance to the neighbors.

The possibility of tracheal mite and nosema problems is very low by now. Only the very weakest hives are still fighting them. Varroa mites should be at very low levels, but be aware that they are starting to increase now that the treatments are out of the hive.

Beekeeper Chores

Check your hives weekly and add supers as needed. Be sure there is plenty of space above the brood nest for honey. Frames with new foundation should go in. A strong hive will draw out the foundation into new comb in just a few days if the weather is good.

In a hive with two deep brood boxes, the bees will often move to the upper brood box, leaving the lower box relatively empty. This is an inefficient use of space in the hive and can lead to swarming. In May or June it is useful to “reverse” these brood boxes. This means removing all of the boxes, placing the second box on the bottom board where the first box had been, and placing the first box above it. This may break the brood cluster. So check the weather forecast and do this when at least two warm days are coming. The bees will need to rearrange their cluster, and less brood will be lost in the process if it is not exposed to cool weather much below 50o.

Observations and Ideas

Hold a honey frame horizontally and shake it over the hive. If nectar sprinkles out, your bees are on a honey flow. The nectar is still dilute and watery. With time, the bees will either consume it or continue to thicken and ripen it into honey.

Swarm collecting has been a favorite pastime of beekeepers for centuries. If you are interested in doing this, have a few empty hives on hand. Some beekeepers locate empty “trap hives” or “bait hives” near their own hives. Often, a swarm flying out of one of your own hives will move into the trap hive, since it is much like what the bees are searching for. In this way, the beekeeper manages to catch and save the bees, although the source hive is weakened.

Source: http://www.ksbabeekeeping.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/beecalendar.pdf