Now that mid-March has arrived, the season for the Bee Keeper in central Virginia is in full swing. My primary goals right now are to get honey supers on any hive that appears strong. I also want to note the hives that appear ready for Nuc creation (which starts in about a week, for me.) Of course, there are lots of prep tasks that are constantly taking place now (new frame and foundation creation, patching boxes (or, more likely, putting boxes in need of repair in my garage for future work – whenever time allows!!!)) and general equipment prep.)

Adding a honey super now is probably not the best idea for the normal hobby beekeeper. It’s probably better to shoot for early April for this task. I mainly start in mid-March because I have found that I can rarely get around to all of the hives in early April. So, to make sure all are ready on Tax Day, I start a month early. In truth, this probably slows down some of my hives (too much space to manage), but I have never seen a long term negative impact (maybe I get less honey than I normally would have, but I get enough honey as it is!) Why do I add honey supers? For honey, of course! But, it is a swarm management technique. Giving them that extra space now can keep some hives happy and out of the swarm mode as the nectar flow starts to pop.

I was also able to fully hive all but one of my overwintered Nucs this past weekend. I say it way too much, but these nucs really impress me. With the exception of a few swarms, I have never seen a build up like I see with overwintered Nucs at this time of year. I think the fact that I raise the queen in July (and sometimes August) means that she is born, gets to raise a few new bees and then the hive tells her to STOP for the Winter. She was just born and probably says “What the (*&(*&!!!!!”. She then waits all Winter and, once they give her the green light, she goes to town. At any rate, they really roll (and that’s why I have learned that they need to be fully hived in early March – this year, I am running behind a bit.)

But, I ran across one this past weekend that was definitely not popping. She was probably working 3 frames, max. If I combined all of the brood, I bet I could get it all onto one frame. These things frustrate me. Early on, when I was just observing and not messing with them, I had a couple of instances where a hive that appeared much slower than others, significantly outperformed its peers by May. In those days, I remember thinking they wouldn’t make it, but didn’t try to manage them (this was my “leave them bee and see what happens” phase), and was surprised to see that most did just fine. The queens simply like to start their build up later.

But, since then, I have had many experiences where weak queens never amount to much and the hive, eventually, peters out. I always wonder “if I had just killed the queen in late March, would the hive had recovered?” As of this moment, I am sticking with the “late bloomers” theory and letting them be. I did reduce them to only one Deep super and am hopeful they will be rolling by early March (unlikely, given normal Bee Math, but we shall see.)

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