Author: Christi Baughman

Texas Spring Hive Management


Spring is a very exciting time of year if you are a beekeeper.  Everything that happens in your hives in the spring sets you up for the next two seasons.  So spring is a time of decision making. The biggest decisions center around your goals for the spring and summer seasons.

Unless you are fortunate enough to have apiaries in areas near Chinese Tallow, Cotton, or Guajillo, the climate and short nectar flow in most of the Texas cause beekeeper to choose between increasing their hive count or producing more honey.  In some areas of Texas it’s difficult to do both, especially in north Texas climate where my Texas operation is based.

Beekeepers in areas with a short nectar flow are forced to make a decision between 1. Split for more hives or 2. Help your bees make honey.

 

  1. Split hives: more bees, more hives
  • Rotate deep boxes to give the queen more space for brood rearing once she starts laying.
  • Add a third deep super to give the queen more space for brood rearing
  • Feed sugar syrup when the bees are bringing in pollen to give the queen a steady food supply for brood rearing. Even if they have honey reserves, the syrup helps stimulate the queen.
  • Once queens are available set up splits in deep supers above a queen excluder, isolate her in the bottom box, let them sit for a half or whole day so the workers even out their numbers on the brood in the splits, then remove the splits and queen them. Or pull brood off the parent hive to make up nucs, then queen them.
  • Feed your splits or nucs.
  • Re-Queen your parent hives.
  • Treat new hives for mites after they have grown out into a full deep.
  1. Make Honey: more bees, more honey
  • Rotate deep boxes to give the queen more space for brood rearing once she starts laying
  • Feed sugar syrup when the bees are bringing in pollen to give the queen a steady food supply for brood rearing. Even if they have honey reserves, the syrup helps stimulate the queen.

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Winter Hive Management

There are four major factors that affect how your hives will survive the winter.

  1. Population Numbers
  • Bees cluster when the temps are below 57 degrees F to maintain warmth, if their numbers are low they cannot maintain enough warmth to survive cold days and nights. The critical factor is population; the more bees, the larger the cluster, the better they can maintain and generate heat.  Secondary factors to hive warmth are location:  placement in a sunny spot with good wind breaks.
  • Fall brood rearing is/was critical to winter population, the bees hatched out in the fall are the ones to keep the hive throughout the winter months. Best practices for good winter survival is to feed in mid Sept – early Nov.
  • If you have small weak hives combine them in Nov or Dec.  Either lose one queen by putting two hives together or combine them with a double screen to keep both queens and share heat. Kelly Beekeeping offers a great double screen (item No. 60-R).
  1. Food Supply
  • Is the hive heavy? Weight is one of the fastest and easiest ways to check the hive’s resources.  Heft the bottom box of the hive with one hand to test weight.

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