Le bons temps roulant unseasonably early this year and my new girls have issued a license to swarm.
Here’s the scene at the Kerry hive around midday yesterday:
We opened the hive yesterday for the first time since Bill closed ’em up last Fall and removed some honey to curb their enthusiasm for swarming. Perhaps that wee bit o robbing and some rain today will check their wayward inclinations.
Gathering crocus pollen
“The accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by authentic reports of officers in the public service.”
President James Polk, 1848
And neither would I believe it if I didn’t witness with my very own eyes the overloaded pollen baskets on at least 40% of workers returning to the hive. Elm pollen, crocus pollen, and undoubtedly more which my undiscerning human eyes can’t yet parse.
Welcome to the boom, girls.
Spring feeding
In the high dry desert of Albuquerque, it’s time for spring feeding.
Our days can warm up to 60° but the nights remain precarious, often dropping to 25°. For the girls, it’s a rough time. Little is blooming and they’re close to running out of reserves.
So my bee mentor TJ recommends a bit of extra support in the form of a 1:1 sugar syrup fed until they stop drinking. I’ve added Honey B Healthy to the syrup, thinking that it can’t possibly hurt. The grateful critters are sucking up 16 oz a day.
Albuquerque top bar bee sage TJ offers the following report:
Poppies in my Albuquerque garden
Still too dry for a good honey flow in the spring. Forecast is for rain and snow for the next several days. Could come in time.
Swarm season (in Abq) usually starts around Good Friday/Easter.
Not everyone feeds their bees, but now is a good time for supplemental feed. Try sugar water at 1:1. After the weather is warmer, try four parts of water to one part of sugar (same ratio as nectar), as this causes the queen to start laying a bit early for strong spring buildup.
Yesterday evening, I checked on the queen.
Activity around the hive had settled into a normal pattern, but I wanted to make sure she’d been freed from her cage properly. At sunset, A. and I opened the hive (my first opening without the patient oversight of TJ) to find that she was nearly freed but not quite. We smoked off her attendants and peeled back the mesh.
Queen Natasha (as I’ve just now decided to call her) skittered down into the hive without a moment’s hesitation. There was plenty of nectar already filling the comb and Natasha’s crew were busy and docile.
So far so good.
Here’s another lesson from the Albuquerque bee man, TJ, and his rooftop hives.
Comb filled with tight even worker brood like this is pure eye candy for the beekeeper opening her hives in Spring. Lots of worker brood means a strong workforce able to harvest spring nectar.
At my place in the city of Albuquerque, the girls will find nectar from a variety of trees such as apricot, elm, honey locust, and a variety of other flowering fruit trees maintained by urban gardeners. Thought, this year, my girls arrived late (I just received my package a couple of days ago) TJ’s bees have been hard at work for over a month. In fact, when I snapped the photo shown above, his girls were already bringing in honey and the gray pollen characteristic of elm trees. It’s the start of a rockin’ year for the hive.
As if a bee swarm itself weren’t enough to turn a day bad, Jack from the Self-Sufficient Steward experienced a double-whammy this week.
So, I flunk basic beekeeping once – preempting the swarm is pretty rudimentary stuff and I blew it. But now I have a chance to really earn my beekeeping merit badge by capturing the swarm in the hive body I had prepared to split the colony. So I scramble around, calling in to some experienced beekeepers for advice and re-reading the ‘capturing the swarm’ section.
Then I hustle back out a full ten minutes later, ready for my trial by fire, to find….an empty branch.
On Saturday, TJ issued an invitation irresistible to any new beekeeper: a hands-on demo of his spring hive inspection.
My first hive opening, it was magic. Check out some annotated photos from the inspection and a slideshow version below
Props to local woodworker, Bill H., for crafting this lovely little bee home. It’s a Kenyan Top Bar Hive with plenty of modifications designed by local bee sage, TJ.
I’ve got a lot of old men looking out for me.
Photo by Joy Godfrey
mistress beek 
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