We are blessed to have had both production colonies and nucs come through the winter healthy and strong. April has been very busy trying to grow our apiaries and mange the bees’ swarm desire. We have had overwintered nucs already swarm or at least try to. Alas, our queens are clipped and have little success trying to fly off. In once case, we found her sitting on the ground in front of the hive.
We are on our 4th round of grafting to requeen older queens (2 years), and to make spring splits (we call these spring nucs as opposed to overwintered).
The overwintered nucs have a good 5-6 lbs of bees in them and full resource frames, they are primed to explode and they are! This is both wonderful and challenging since they need to be managed as we would a regular hive to prevent or rather manage swarming.
Our regular hives are overflowing and we have been supering up as well as adding additional deeps. Despite the weather’s best efforts, things are looking good for the honey harvest!
Things are going as well as can be expected. The rainy weather, cold nighttime temps have been unpleasant. Regardless, keep on keepin’ on! Hope everyone stays on top on their bees. We have cast several swarms, and it happens. If you are looking at drawn comb, you should be fine, you will have a laying queen in about 2 weeks and 3 more weeks till the strong honey flow. Because of the current temperatures, we are considering using Formic Pro this week/next. We are always mindful of the silent killer, varroa destructor.