February temperatures are ranging in the upper 30’s and 60’s and even into 70. Lots of red maple trees and others in bud and the bees have started collecting pollen and nectar. Our main nectar flow typically begins in April here in central Georgia. The queen has been laying eggs since the Winter Solstice, and we are finding 3-4 frames of capped brood already in our hives. This tells us to prepare for lots of worker bees and to add more supers (boxes) to our hives. If bees sense too small of space, they will SWARM and find better accommodations, leaving us with no workers to collect the nectar and thus NO HONEY. These spring like conditions seem 2-3 weeks earlier this year. But BEWARE, March always brings a few days of below 30 weather here.
Last Monday evening, we attended the Eastern Piedmont Beekeepers Association meeting in Athens, GA. Big crowd and we learned a lot from Ron Putnam who spoke on checker boarding hives to reduce swarming and increase honey production. Here’s the link to the paper he referenced by Walt Wright.