Spring expansion & crystalised ivy honey leftovers

[RichardK]

Perpignan is beautiful ... my daughter spent half of her in-country part of her language degree there - she was there in the winter and spring - we visited her and it hardly seemed possible leaving the UK in mid winter and getting to Perpignan in spring ... we were walking around in T-shirts in February ! I'm not surprised the bees are well advanced.

Ah well you know how it can be in Spring here then. For me as a beginner it brings its own problems mind you. Forums, both French & English, tend to reflect a weather pattern a little more northerly than here & I find very few threads from beekeepers around the south coast. So for example I've been worrying all winter that as my bees have been active most days that they'd get through their stores too quickly! Splits is another example - threads generally say from May onwards, however, a local beekeeper to me said in 2021 they had done all theirs by the end of the first week of April.....

That said, I'll happily take all the confusion (for me) in return for the weather!

 

[RichardK]

Must be nice to be able to do beekeeping for more than 4 months a year .....

I think my wife would prefer if I could only do beekeeping for 4 months a year!

 

[Ian123]

Ah well you know how it can be in Spring here then. For me as a beginner it brings its own problems mind you. Forums, both French & English, tend to reflect a weather pattern a little more northerly than here & I find very few threads from beekeepers around the south coast. So for example I've been worrying all winter that as my bees have been active most days that they'd get through their stores too quickly! Splits is another example - threads generally say from May onwards, however, a local beekeeper to me said in 2021 they had done all theirs by the end of the first week of April.....

That said, I'll happily take all the confusion (for me) in return for the weather!

You can make splits in the uk the very beginning of April with mated queens, and certainly I’d expect queens to mate end of April and into May. Obviously cold snaps can and do cause issues.

 

[pargyle]

I think my wife would prefer if I could only do beekeeping for 4 months a year!

Mine would prefer it if I didn't keep bees at all ... the only time they get any sort of approval is when she wants a jar of honey to give the hairdresser or when there are bragging rights to her friends aboud 'our bees' ... that's the royal 'our' - the nearest she gets to them is if one inadvertently comes near her !

 

[RichardK]

You can make splits in the uk the very beginning of April with mated queens, and certainly I’d expect queens to mate end of April and into May. Obviously cold snaps can and do cause issues.

And in your neck of the woods, when (roughly) do you start to see reasonable activity from the hive & when does the first flow start? I'm guessing there's a gap of 3 to 4 weeks between the two?

 

[Antipodes]

And in your neck of the woods, when (roughly) do you start to see reasonable activity from the hive & when does the first flow start? I'm guessing there's a gap of 3 to 4 weeks between the two?

One thing to watch is if you get a rotten spring. Really wet for instance. Here, things can get pretty tenuous in November as there is a big demand on food with all that brood, but sometimes the bees can't collect much. This year (or season) here was a prime example.

 

[RichardK]

One thing to watch is if you get a rotten spring. Really wet for instance. Here, things can get pretty tenuous in November as there is a big demand on food with all that brood, but sometimes the bees can't collect much. This year (or season) here was a prime example.

Absolutely. A couple of years ago we got a big dump of snow at the beginning of March - it even snowed on the mediterranean beaches so people were a little shell shocked! Still, you can't control the weather so you either have a go (within the bounds of being reasonable) or do nothing.

 

[Ian123]

And in your neck of the woods, when (roughly) do you start to see reasonable activity from the hive & when does the first flow start? I'm guessing there's a gap of 3 to 4 weeks between the two?

I’d say first inspections March dependant on season. First real income would be flowering cherries/dandelion

 

[oliver90owner]

I’d say first inspections March dependant on season. First real income would be flowering cherries/dandelion

Depends on the weather, not the date - even to the month.

One year I inspected around the 20th of February. Bees were flying in large numbers every day from at least the 14th. The weather had been up above 20 Celsius every day for the previous week. There was no brood in the particular hive at the time, but there were polished cells. The following check was about three weeks later - warm weather again/still - and she was laying strongly.

 

[Antipodes]

This season just gone, November (equivalent month there is May), was a very hard time for the bees (and the beekeeper), as the weather was poor. A very, very experienced beekeeper here reckons that November ( equivalent of May there), is the most risky month for starvation. I doubted it until this season just gone. I suppose there are lots of hungry mouths to feed. I note that May is missing on the calendar as a month to check stores in the article linked below. What have you guys generally found over the years?

https://barnsleybeekeepers.org.uk/beekeeping-year/

 

[Boston Bees]

This season just gone, November (equivalent month there is May), was a very hard time for the bees (and the beekeeper), as the weather was poor. A very, very experienced beekeeper here reckons that November ( equivalent of May there), is the most risky month for starvation. I doubted it until this season just gone. I suppose there are lots of hungry mouths to feed. I note that May is missing on the calendar as a month to check stores in the article linked below. What have you guys generally found over the years?

https://barnsleybeekeepers.org.uk/beekeeping-year/

Any month can be bad, of course, if it happens to rain the whole time. But there are so many trees/plants etc that flower in May that food is generally not an issue.

 

[Erichalfbee]

This season just gone, November (equivalent month there is May), was a very hard time for the bees (and the beekeeper), as the weather was poor. A very, very experienced beekeeper here reckons that November ( equivalent of May there), is the most risky month for starvation. I doubted it until this season just gone. I suppose there are lots of hungry mouths to feed. I note that May is missing on the calendar as a month to check stores in the article linked below. What have you guys generally found over the years?

https://barnsleybeekeepers.org.uk/beekeeping-year/

June is a month to be wary here in a lot of places due to diminished forage