Month by month 02: February

February is a short month—the shortest, but often the harshest: cold conditions frequently become very severe. The colonies consume large amounts of honey.
 

Feeding is the guiding principle of winter. If reserves proved insufficient in autumn, one should not hesitate to place fondant (candy) on the hole of the inner cover or directly on top of the frames where the bees are clustered. Alternatively, 1 kg of sugar cubes can be used. Sugar crystals that are too large to dissolve in the humidity of the hive will fall onto the bottom board; a certain amount is usually found there during the spring inspection. The syrup given in late March or early April, once temperatures regularly exceed 13 °C, serves to stimulate the queen’s egg-laying. Below this temperature, syrup that is too cold cannot be taken up by the bees, which would become chilled and fall. A simple rule of thumb is: summer time = syrup, winter time = candy. With the warmer spells now common, pollen also enters the hive on fine days; hazel pollen, among the earliest available, is low in protein. A key reference point is the flowering of dandelions: their mass appearance signals a lasting warming, and syrup then has a good chance of being taken.

WORK AT THE APIARY

Monitoring weak colonies

Hives that are too light and uneaten candy blocks suggest that colonies have died. One should not hesitate to open the hive. If, by chance, a very small cluster of bees still alive but weakened is found on honey, unable to reach the candy and seemingly doomed because reserves are so low, the candy should be placed in direct contact with the cluster, well opened. The whole is then covered with a cloth and bubble wrap or another flexible, thin insulating material, after which the roof is replaced without the wooden inner cover. If this ensemble survives, it will be possible in March, from a strong colony, to take a few brood frames with bees to recover the future queen and create an artificial swarm.

If the colony dies, the hive should be removed from the apiary and disinfected with the flame of a blowtorch. The combs must be inspected; those containing dead bees are destroyed, and the sanitary state is checked. In the absence of disease suspicion, the frames can be stored protected from wax moths and will serve later for artificial swarms. All suspicious frames must be destroyed: it is better to replace them than to risk transmitting disease to other colonies.

Cleaning around the apiary should be completed, and supports for new hives prepared. Weeding should be carried out where the beekeeper walks, but in areas affected by the Asian hornet, tall grasses should be allowed to grow in front of the entrance; they greatly hinder the hornets and often lead them to abandon such apiaries. Sowing grasses that will be tall in July/August is advisable, as this is when hornets are most harmful. The mesh area of screened bottom boards should be reduced: about one quarter of the surface remains open to evacuate moisture, while the rest is closed to avoid wind turbulence that could slow the resumption of the queen’s egg-laying.

WORK IN THE WORKSHOP

Disinfecting hive bodies and supers

Frames must be wired and waxed, old frames discarded, and cappings wax sent for processing. Those with a larger number of hives should convert their supers to eight frames and replace the frame rests, which greatly improves uncapping. A drawn frame should always alternate with a waxed frame, as bees may build crosswise due to the larger spacing. Pollen traps can also be prepared to collect part of the foragers’ pollen loads. To avoid exhausting colonies, very fine grids should be used, removing only a small fraction of the pollen brought in. All hives must be equipped accordingly so that foragers do not preferentially enter hives without traps.

Preparing for queen rearing

It is still time to decide to rear queens for those who have not yet done so. Rearing is very simple, though admittedly time-consuming. Having young queens, however, is a major asset in ensuring good harvests. Queens born this year will be in full laying the following year for honey production, but they can already be used this year to produce artificial swarms. These artificial swarms make it possible, the following year, to unite them with production colonies, replace queens, and increase the colony’s bee population. Artificial swarms started on two frames, then reinforced during the summer with a frame of capped brood without bees and continuously fed, reach five frames by July and overwinter very well. This is the most reliable way to obtain populous colonies capable of producing honey.

Pierre Jean Prost states that a queen of good quality can lay up to 3,000 eggs per day under optimal conditions of nurse abundance and temperature. The following year, her laying rate is between 1,800 and 2,300 eggs per day. Our harvest is nothing other than the honey surplus of a colony produced by a surplus of bees. This surplus itself is the result of abundant egg-laying. A queen older than two years can therefore no longer provide the population capable of delivering a good harvest. Rearing in the coming months thus prepares the following year.