Trying to get hive ready for the honey flow

[thomas]

Howdy

I am trying to get my girls ready for the honey flow but due to them requeening themselves and the weather they seem to still have a big population of bees in the first hive even thou they swarmed twice in two weeks. And my secong hive is the onlty one that has not swarmed and they have a huge population of bees and i have a super on them but they have not yet moved up. And my third hive has only half the population they had at the beginning until they swarm will the new queens have them built up enough to be ready for the flow that has been delayed and how can i get my two packages to build up quick or should i just let them use the flow to get ready for the summer flow.

Tom

[Chrissy Shaw]

Hi there, those are some tough questions. I reckon you need local advice for those specifically. I would call me a local beekeeper tonight and ask for some local advice as soon as you can.

Chrissy

[tecumseh]

I would think the easiest strategy would be to 1) feed the packages until you have a box of bees especially if they are being started on foundation 2) a tradional spring time management practice is to equalize (in a very approximate manner) the brood and resources of the existing hives.

if your active hives are robust and 'healthy' you can also bump the packages (and decrease swarming behavior in existing hives) by moving capped brood from your active hive to the packages. you need to do this incrementally so that the bees within the box can still cover the brood.

lastly if one hive is having difficulty getting a new queen to stick then the first thing I would consider is mite problems (if the hive had become queenless when few mature drones were present this might be another variable to consider before mites).

good luck...

[sierrabees]

There is a technique that has been discussed here for increasing honey production that involves removing the queen about two weeks before the honey flow so the bees have little or no brood to feed. This stimulates the bees to do nothing but harvest and process nector. It sounds like two of your hives may be in that condition. I would give them a frame with a small amount of eggs and unsealed brood just in case they are queenless and make sure they have plenty of room when the honey flow starts. If you take frames from the outer edges of the brood cluster in your weaker hives you can minimize the effect of takeing brood from them and you can give the weak hives some full frames of more mature brood in exchange. You might be able to get the best of two worlds with this approach.

Unfortunately nothing is certain since Murphy's law proves that he was a beekeeper.

[Vabeeguy]

I agree with tecumseh, everythime I add a new package, I take a frame or two of brood from other hives, seems to give them a real boost.