Seasons of Love, Seasons of Loss.

Last fall I spent several weekends preparing our bees for winter and saying goodbye to my mother. Her time was short and as the weather grew colder, each visit with her seemed more precious than the last. Our family gathered around to thank her for all she had given to us, for the legacy she would leave and for all the love she had showered over us for decades. As fluffy snowflakes fell on the last evening in October, I kissed her cheek and said goodnight for what would be the last time.

This winter has been hard on us all. Beekeepers across the nation have been reporting above average losses of honeybees. From the commercial operations providing pollination services to the small backyard hobbyist, our colonies have been decimated. Project Apis recently reported colony losses as high as 60-70% across North America.

I recently checked on our apiary in central Minnesota to find all 8 of my colonies had perished. I opened each box methodically to clean out the dead bees and search for clues to why they didn’t make it. I had mite counts right at or just below threshold all of last season and treated them anyway as a precaution. We did an early fall feeding, combined a few weaker hives and carefully insulated the 8 colonies that we thought stood the best chance of survival.

As I sorted through my colonies I saw no evidence of Nosema. The wireless temperature loggers had reported internal hive temps in the high 60s until the 2nd week of February and then, almost overnight, they dropped to below freezing. All of the boxes had a surplus of honey reserves, two boxes were still over 60 lbs. They didn’t starve, they just ran out of time.

This spring will be a season of regrowth, of regenerating our apiary, and renewing the fullness of life after loss. 

The first order of business will be sorting out all the frames of comb from the deadouts, brushing away the bee bodies and storing them in our bee barn with good access to airflow so they do not get moldy. I stack my boxes crosswise on top of plastic tubs to keep the mice from getting at them. When my nucs arrive they will be ready to redeploy with young colonies eager to grow. I bought a few new feeder boxes which will be painted and ready by that time.

After feeding for a couple weeks, the pollen should be abundant in our swampy areas that are flush with willow and poplar trees. We have plenty of comb ready for fresh brood so they should be off to a good start. If the populations are strong enough by the 3rd week in June, we may be able to do splits or even a super.

At Fry Family Farms we make comb honey using SimplKomb, the product we created for easy production and harvest. This may not be a bumper crop year with new nucs but one technique we are eager to try we learned from one of our customers in Georgia. He lets his colonies fill a regular super of honey first, then he removes 2 or 3 frames from the center of the super box and places SimplKomb cassettes there. Something about violating the bee space really motivates the bees to fill them up quickly and he is able to rotate new SimplKomb cassettes into the super every few days.

As with all comb honey making, you do need the trifecta of beekeeping, a strong colony, a strong flow and crowded bees.

Spring splits are a great way to crowd your bees by shaking down bees from the top brood box into the lower, supering that with SimplKomb cassettes, and splitting off the top box.

Swarms are famous for prolific comb building abilities, we have had several customers place SimplKomb supers over a brood box of a freshly caught swarm and had complete fills very quickly.

It is also important to not give your bees too many options when convincing them to start building in the cassettes. If there are other honey supers on the hive, they tend to go there first especially if there are  partially filled cells. Part of training your bees to do the packaging work for you is allowing them ease of access and without other options.

Waxing your SimplKomb cassettes is also very important. Painting it on thick be sure to cover the entire surface at the bottom of the cups. David Burns did a video last year using colored wax that proved bees will recycle wax that is already there so go ahead and be generous.

You can spritz your cassettes with a bit of sugar water to get them interested or if you happen to have cassettes from a previous season that were not completely filled, put those in the center as a starter seed.

The landscape on our farm is a bit dull right now.

The snows have melted, everything is brown and lifeless.

We look forward to the rains to freshen things up and the sunshine to warm us and reignite the cycles of life.