Spring comes early for the bees. I spent a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago going through all the hives and checking on their progress. All the Queens have starting laying brood and are in the top boxes, so I rotated the hive boxes to give the Queens room to lay and build up the population in time for the big nectar flow later in spring.

Plum about to bloom

I am still working on getting the new hives put together for the apiary expansion this year. Queens Jackie and Charlotte look strong already and may be candidates for splitting next month. Splitting strong hives is when you take out some of the frames of brood and some of the bees (and sometimes the Queen) and put them in a new hive. Workers in the hive without a Queen will select an egg and feed it Royal Jelly and create a new Queen. (Bees are pretty amazing!)
Yesterday, my four packages of new bees arrived. I had to scramble to finish the frames on two of them, I am a terrible procrastinator!

Expanding the apiary

I should have spent more time in 19th century house (our six days without power after the heavy snow storm in early March) making hives. That doesn’t require any electricity. Instead, I read four books which was a nice little vacation from the 21st century. Our time in the 19th century was fine. We have woodstoves, so we were warm. We have a gas range, so we had hot food and since the refrigerator and freezer could only stay so cold with bowls of snow, we did a lot of cooking. We were grateful for the rain barrel and now are planning our simple solar plan to prepare for the next time we lose power.

Heavy snow load that caused power outages all over Central Virginia

But I digress…back to the bees:
I went through to check on all the hives and feed, after I installed the packages. I am sad to report that Anna didn’t make it. Beekeeper error I am sorry to admit. They were completely out of food, as were many of the other hives. I have been feeding fairly regularly but since I have some nefarious robbers in my apiary, I should have checked sooner and kept everybody well stocked.
So plus four and minus one. I feel pretty good about the survival rate in the apiary, many other beekeepers are reporting losses. While picking up the packages I heard that Hungry Hill lost a third of their hives.

Now I need to name these four new Queens…

Queen from one of the new packages

All this work will (hopefully) means a banner year for the bees and honey! I look forward to the first batch of honey every year.

How about beekeeping! I will be teaching a class at the Louisa Arts Center at the end of this month.

Winter is such a great time for planning the next year’s garden. Get out those seed & plant catalogs and dream of warm days working in the sun. Today it actually felt a little like winter and we had a few flakes of snow. A big change from last week, we were down to our shirtsleeves in the balmy 60 degree weather. I was able to get a hive check in and feed the bees on Sunday.

Here are a few tips to attract bee to your yard, even if you don’t want to keep a hive yourself.

1. 1. Don’t use pesticides. Most pesticides are not selective. You are killing off the beneficial bugs along with the pests. If you must use a pesticide, start with the least toxic one and follow the label instructions to the letter.
2. Use local native plants. Research suggests native plants are four times more attractive to native bees than exotic flowers. They are also usually well adapted to your growing conditions and can thrive with minimum attention. In gardens, heirloom varieties of herbs and perennials can also provide good foraging.
3. Chose several colors of flowers. Bees have good color vision to help them find flowers and the nectar and pollen they offer. Flower colors that particularly attract bees are blue, purple, violet, white, and yellow.
4. Plant flowers in clumps. Flowers clustered into clumps of one species will attract more pollinators than individual plants scattered through the habitat patch. Where space allows, make the clumps four feet or more in diameter.
5. Include flowers of different shapes. There are four thousand different species of bees in North America, and they are all different sizes, have different tongue lengths, and will feed on different shaped flowers. Consequently, providing a range of flower shapes means more bees can benefit.
6. Have a diversity of plants flowering all season. Most bee species are generalists, feeding on a range of plants through their life cycle. By having several plant species flowering at once, and a sequence of plants flowering through spring, summer, and fall, you can support a range of bee species that fly at different times of the season.
7. Plant where bees will visit. Bees favor sunny spots over shade and need some shelter from strong winds.