Barrington Farms Apiary, LLC

Barrington Farms Apiary, LLCBarrington Farms Apiary, LLCBarrington Farms Apiary, LLC

Barrington Farms Apiary, LLC

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Beekeeping News

It's Time... To Check the Nucs

By Steven Page January 2024


All beekeeping is local. This article’s dates to perform certain tasks and other recommendations are for the Piedmont of Georgia; your dates and recommendations will differ if you are in the coastal plain or the mountains. 


Bees flying on a warm day in January may only indicate that the hive is being robbed. Early inspections assess honey and queen performance and prevent starvation. 

A quick early inspection, about ten weeks before the main nectar flow, in late January or early February is best. The temperature should be 60F (15C) or warmer.  I inspect during colder weather, keeping the inspection very brief.  Inspect during mid-day, enabling the colony to re-cluster before late-day cooling.  Little or no wind is best; with the cover off, the warm air in the hive will be pulled out by a breeze.  Any frame with brood is immediately returned to keep the brood warm. 

The colony is small, and the weather is cold during early inspections.  Keep the brood together and the honey just above the brood.  Not following these two rules can kill a colony.  Later, in March, when the temperatures are warmer, and the colony's population is larger, these two rules no longer apply.

Any overwintered nuc will need to be fed.  Don’t let your nucs starve.


What to look for...


Honey

If your colonies had 30 pounds of honey in late fall, they probably still have enough to survive until the main nectar flow starts. 


How much honey remains?  The most important task early in the year is to check honey and prevent starvation.  Don’t let your colonies starve.  Feed them if they are low on honey.  Don’t feed them if they don’t need to be fed. 


Moving frames of honey from the edge of the super to the middle, above the brood frames, is a simple way to keep the colony supplied with honey.  Honey from a dead colony can be placed in a colony that needs it.


If there was a shallow super of honey (enough for a Piedmont winter) on the hive last November 1, most of it will be there on February 1.  Expect to find about eight frames of honey in a ten-frame shallow super.  If there are less than six shallow frames of honey, it’s time to feed about one gallon of syrup in a hive top feeder.  As the weeks pass and the weather warms, more forage is available, reducing the honey required to survive until the main nectar flow starts.


Brood

Finding any brood confirms there is a queen; stop the inspection. 

The queen will lay in batches initially.  

Chilling the brood will kill it.  

No brood may indicate the queen has not started laying yet or she has died.  A dead queen can't be replaced until later. One way to resolve a dead queen is to combine with an overwintered nuc. 

Use the honey and drawn comb recovered from dead colonies as needed.


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