The temps are popping up a bit and now is when I go out to have my first real look in the hives. The main thing you can possibly deal with right now would be a lack of resources (feeding or frames of honey from another hive), but it mainly serves as a temperature check for me on each of my hives.
It is amazing to me how you can go to one hive and find them basically just waking up from the Winter (capped brood on 3 frames in one (of two) hive body, with resources on all sides and lots of space to expand into) and then the next hive already has 7 frames of capped brood! In truth, based on my notes, I rarely have many hives that already are covering 7 frames at this time – it usually happens to the majority of my hives by the end of March. This year, the bees are definitely ahead of schedule. I looked through nearly all of my hives in Charles City today and found one thing very much in common – they all had PLENTY of honey. In fact, I had more than one Deep/Medium setup with the Medium nearly full of honey still. This isn’t completely unusual, but in several cases, the Deep was over 60% full of capped brood. Based on my notes, I have never had that happen by March 8.
Today, I was really going out to find my queens and make sure they were all marked. Sometimes, a hive swarms late in the season and I miss it. Now is the time to get green marks on them – for one, it’s easier to find them when I start Nuc creation in a week or two, and, secondly, I do not have to wonder if they were born this year or not. When I make this run, I usually bring several “readied” Nucs to drop off in the yards for later in March (I can’t carry it all if I wait until the day I need them.) I didn’t bring extra brood chambers or honey supers as I never need them at this time of year. But, today, I had two hives that were FULL. I needed to either give them space and/or remove some bees!
So, today I created some of my earliest Nucs ever. I really had no choice. I had hives that had no space in the Medium bodies (mostly honey) and no space in the Deeps (mostly capped brood and bees!) In addition, several hives were identified for Nuc creation within the next week. I really do not have a lot of hope for these Nucs, as there are only a few drones out there. Maybe things will ramp up quickly when I need them (3 weeks from today, when my virgin queens may start their mating flights.) But, the weather looks good for the next few days, so they have a chance.
What alarms me the most is that this is Charles City. These yards are traditionally a week or so behind my Henrico hives. Tomorrow, I have taken the day off to go through the Henrico hives. Who knows what I will find, but I will be prepared!
