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Front Range roller coaster - 2017

27K views 87 replies 21 participants last post by  shinbone 
#1 · (Edited)
Us folks along the Front Range having been riding our usual Springtime roller coaster of weather, with perhaps bigger hills than usual. First, we had an extended early warm-up, which induced the bees to start brooding 2 - 3 weeks early. Then we had an extended streak of normal weather, which meant night time lows in the 20's in the Denver area. Any small clusters that were tricked into laying a relatively large patch of brood by the warm weather had a good chance of being "caught-out," meaning freezing to death while trying to protect the beginning of their new crop of baby bees. I know l lost a hive this way.

But, we may have finally "turned the corner" with sunny days for the foreseeable future. The two videos, below, show the bees are packing in the pollen, which looks to be light beige (light brown?) in color.











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#31 ·
It's been a week now... how are things looking where you are? I've seen some bees flying and working blossoms, even hanging around our garden hose just a dozen feet or so from my bait hive, but haven't seen any scouts checking out the hive itself. Anybody having any better luck?
 
#34 ·
This is a crazy year.
On the 8th I split a couple of my backyard hives. vertical splits using a double screen board. Both hives were strong but not crowded, and I saw a few queen cups with no eggs or larvae. I took open brood and nurse bees and put them on top, left the queen, capped brood and most honey below. Gave the lower half a super. Thought I had caught them in time before swarm fever set in.

Yesterday, 5 days later, one of the hives threw a swarm. I was getting ready to go to work in the afternoon and I heard the roar of bees.
They settled in my neighbor's spruce tree.

Then they all went back home. So, tomorrow I work in the afternoon again, so I will put the queen-right half on top and let the lower box raise a queen.

To add to the craziness, my friend in Lafayette has a nuc with a queen cell. That small hive threw a swarm yesterday. Pathetic little swarm without a queen. He tossed the bees back into the nuc.

The 'problem' if you can call it that, is the hives are still packed with last fall's honey, and nectar coming in. The bees are flush so why not swarm early and often?
 
#36 ·
Looks like I timed my grafting perfectly. I have 6 queens out on mating flights the next few days. Can't beat mid 70s and calm! I was out playing a round of golf yesterday and a swarm came overhead about 6 feet off the ground, it was quite the spectacle. You would have thought a mountain lion was attacking the way the 4 some ahead of us took off running!
 
#39 · (Edited)
Snow melts off that roof pretty quick, but I am not sure how much the black helps with that.

On the roof, the hives get full sun from sunrise to sunset. Plus, with the hives up in the air, the bees never bother anyone, no matter how close to the hives a person may be.



 
#44 ·
Interesting article in the Daily Camera today. http://tiny.cc/DailyCameraBees

I managed to bring some pretty marginal colonies through with zero losses this winter. are you all seeing the levels of failed colonies that these keepers seem to be talking about? I lol'd at the chem trail theory that they threw in there. im surprised that some of the larger more experianced keepers are claiming that they have no idea whats happening, we had an exceptionally warm winter and it seems logical that many more colonies than usual would starve to death with the increased metabolism that warm weather creates. we are also the epicenter in the states for bee havers vs bee keepers so im willing to wager a fair number of mite bombs were going off in the fall and hurt some of the keepers also.
 
#45 ·
My losses for the 2016/17 Winter were 20% (I lost 2 out of 10 hives), which is the least losses I have experienced since re-starting beekeeping in 2010.

The two lost hives starved and froze in late January/early February. Even though the losses were directly due to lack of food, the actual cause was varroa mites weakening the hive and impairing nectar collection in the Fall.

My winter survival rate is trending up from year-to-year as I get better at treating for mites.
 
#46 ·
Interesting.
We have bees in Louisville, Lafayette and Longmont and they are going great. We did lose three hives out of 18 but have increased to 22 at last count. But it is fair warning for us to watch and be vigilant.

I thought everyone's bees were going gangbusters. Ya never know.

As far as the warm winter goes; I have found that even with the warm winter our bees came through almost as heavy as they went in to fall. They never used much honey in spring because it warmed up so quickly and they have nectar to gather. The bees are still sitting on lots of honey from last year.
 
#47 ·
Here's how my winter went.

Went into winter with eleven 10F Langs and came out with 10, or 9% loss. Also went into winter with five 5/5 & 5/5/5 NUC's and came out with two, or 60% loss. Most of the NUC's were late starts and likely ill prepared for the winter. The 10F Langs all had open SBB, open lower and upper entries, well ventilated quilt box on top, and two inch rigid foam on all four sides plus top. The bees were force fed 2:1 sugar syrup in the fall with an internally contained "chicken waterers" and had sugar cubes (Laurie's recipe) available as emergency food throughout the winter. I think my Lang loss was probably like Shinbone's, -- starved and froze.

Last year in June I participated in the USDA/APHIS National Honey Bee Survey and just last week I received the analysis and report (done in Beltsville, MD). The highlight of the report was that they found 0.7 Varroa mites per 100 bees. I didn't know that that was possible, but I do OAV in the fall. I am now considering Randy Oliver's glycerin and oxalic acid saturated shop towel approach. It sounds to be a much less labor intensive approach.

Steve
 
#48 ·
We had 8" of snow accumulated, and perhaps that much more melted as it fell, from last Saturday's storm (4/29). 99% of it had melted in by yesterday afternoon.

Today's rain shifted to rather heavy snow for a while this morning (5/3).
 
#49 ·
Hey all, I'm looking to do a cutdown split on a booming hive ahead of the sweet clover bloom. I'm still fairly new to the game, but my impression is that this is our main flow In the area. Does anybody have their finger on when this usually kicks off on the front range and or have any experience doing a cut down ahead of It? Thanks as always!

Nick
 
#50 ·
I'd like to know about what to expect re the flows too in this area... looking forward to hearing from you lovely long-time Front Range beeks :)

Also wondering if any flow we might have had going might have been set back by yesterday's hail pounding? Our street was covered in shredded tree leaves by the time it ended. There are deep hailstone dents in my hive telescoping covers... must have been a horrible experience for the poor little bees!
 
#51 · (Edited)
Yesterday afternoon in Denver - woe to any queens who had ventured out to spend time with the boys:

https://randallcherry.smugmug.com/2017/Bees-2017/i-pbzHXKz/A

And, yes, this hail storm is a major setback to any plants that had started their bloom cycle - those hailstones quickly stripped off many leaves, buds, and blooms. This is part of the reason why there are few-to-no fruit orchards along the Front Range.




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#55 ·
We had about triple that - ~8" accumulating on the hive tops. Heavy rain changed to snow overnight - 5/18. More snow today, & freeze warning for tonight - 5/19. Lots of great moisture!
 
#56 ·
I haven't been on beesource for over a year and its good to see some familiar names :) When we had the hurricane force winds I lost 15 hives to high winds, all were blown over and every colony was dead on the ground. The way the hives fell over left the frames parallel to the winds so the colonies clusted on the damp ground and died. I'm working back from 6 remaining colonies two of which seem to have a heavy mite load. It sure has been one heck of a spring and that late, wet snow we got was crazy. Crazy, crazy weather lol. Colobee, Steve, Lazarus (forgot his screen name here) Barb, I think of you all whenever I graft lol. Also I would like to pay some Pikes Peak Beekeeper dues for 2017 if someone could shoot me a private mail on who to contact about dues.
 
#57 ·
Hey fellow frontrangers, how is the season going for you all? I've got my main production colony with 4 full medium supers. I'm up to 9 nucs now, do you all think there is enough flow remaining to get some of these into full size hives? I have been periodically pulling brood frames and adding them to one of them, and it now fills a double deep, but I'm having problems getting them started drawing wax in their medium honey super. I'm hoping to let a few of the nucs run and see how big they can get, but I'm worried about them refusing to draw frames. the yellow clover seems to be blooming pretty strong still, what are your feelings on how we stand going forward with the flow? can we expect anything of any significance after the sweet clover shuts down. thanks and I hope your hives are heavy!
 
#59 ·
I'm up in Broomfield. I'm surprised to hear you say were headed into the dearth already. I feel like the clover bloom has really just started in the last 2 weeks in the open space around my house. maybe it's just not as strong this year. do you usually get much for a fall flow? sounds like I'll need to start feeding pretty heavily if I want to get more comb drawn. I know the Russian sage and some of the more suburban irrigated plants are about to go in earnest, that might give a small bump.
 
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