The Buzz Newsletter

June 2004

 

 

Page 5

June is Here, Were you Ready?

This is late for June, but I thought I would let you know when the first swarm arrived at my home this year. It was on May 8th, a cool cloudy overcast type of day. I went outside to do some yard work and here they were, scouts investigating the bee equipment I had brought home from the out yards where I had lost several hives over the winter. It was very obvious that they were looking for a home from the way they would go in a hive body and then come out and fly around and go back in as if they had not looked at something and needed another look. I gave them an open invitation by setting up a bottom board with a deep hive body with drawn combs and inner cover and lid. I had to be gone for a while from mid morning until about three that afternoon. When I came home I had a new colony of bees already working in the hive I had set up for them. They were busy cleaning combs and starting to bring in pollen. My son and I moved them out to an out yard that evening. One year long before the mite invasion I had sixteen swarms of bees come to my home and establish themselves in equipment I had stored out side as at that time I didn’t have a building for storing my bee equipment. I don’t go chasing swarms unless they are close enough to the ground that I don’t need a ladder. Even then I try not to go after them, as it is more costly to go after a swarm than it is to order a queen and make a new colony by using brood from several of my established colonies.

Have you been watching the plants around your home as they bloomed this year to see if they are early, normal or late on blooming. I have noticed that they seem to be a little early. About ten years ago when I had reason to travel the southern half of Iowa, I noticed that plants would bloom about two weeks earlier in the very southern part of the state to when they bloomed in the central part of the state. I can only guess that it also took the same type of plant another two weeks to bloom up near the northern part of the state near Minnesota. The maples and willows bloomed in mid March and then the crocus and daffodils by late March to early April. The redbud and tulip bushes came next and then those wonderful golden dandelions with their pollen and nectar that is always a welcome source of food for the bees for most of us as that is the time we start our spring build up of colonies. It is also just after new packages have been installed and those always need fresh pollen. About the time the dandelions end the wild plums start along with hawthorn. Now if you want to smell a flower that will make you sick take a good deep smell of a hawthorn bloom. Bees work it, so the nectar must be very sweet or is sweeter than other plants blooming at that time. The apple orchards with their neatly trimmed grass come on about the end of April or the first of May. Tulips bloom in early May, but the bees don’t care as I have never seen a bee work a tulip. Wild mustard with its bright yellow tops wave and call to the bees out in the pastures and some times along the roadsides. The birds foot trefoil plants in my yard and the white Dutch clover plants are making buds for blooming shortly. By mid May the wild cherries and black locust are starting to show their plumage. Coming back from Davenport the third weekend of May I saw a number of black locust in full bloom. This is a little early as they normally reach their peak around Memorial Day. By the time you will be reading this the sweet clovers will be about in their peak and the road sides will be yellow with birds foot trefoil and the road banks will show a pink to white bloom from crown vetch. The air will be filled with fire flies at night and the main honey flow will be own. Were you ready? Did you have your surplus supers on the bees? Are you trying comb honey this year? Did you notice the plants as they bloom during the season before you started keeping bees? I will bet you never noticed the plants along the road and in the woods before like you do now. We will soon see knapweed or chicory growing along the side of the road with it’s blue flowers and then later in the fall just drive down a country road and notice the partridge pea with it’s yellow sweet pea shaped blooms. Take a ride this summer and see if you can find a road side ditch filled with bloom and stop and check to see if there are any bees working the flowers. I have often done this in the past and you will be amazed at how sweet the air smells and the wonderful hum the bees make as they gather nectar to make that wonderful sweet golden food we call Honey. May all of your supers be full of honey by now.

By the Old Man