First Things First – Coming Back Together – Time To Shake
First Things First
The first thing to consider when getting ready to shake bees is to make sure you have bees to shake. We begin that process in mid January by moving colonies to two different locations. Each location has a separate advantage for building up colony sizes. One set of hives will travel go to California where they will be welcomed into the almond trees. The other set is moved to Florida to enjoy an early spring.
Over 70% of U.S. honey bees travel to California for almond pollination. That’s roughly 2.4 million hives. It is fascinating to witness the amazing logistics required to make all that happen.
Some of the Florida hives will be used to raise queens. We need those queens to complete our spring 2021 NUCs. The rest of the Florida hives will grow and be split to make up for winter losses.
Coming back together
When the last of the almond petals drop the orchards will begin spraying for pests and fungal diseases.
Our bees need to exit pronto. This occurs around the end of March. Off to Northern Kentucky to met up with the returning Florida bees. We give all them a week or two to calm down and adjust to their new conditions. It will be cold and windy in Kentucky but still a week or two warmer then northern Illinois. The rapidly changing weather conditions will dictate our schedule from then until the first part of May.
When the weather permits we begin making NUCs. This is accomplished by pulling frames of brood and bees out of hives that are extra full of both. Working with the hives at this time can be tricky. Timing is very important. What almonds lack in nectar they more then make up for in pollen. This will be the first pollen they’ve seen since the previous fall. All that new pollen and a good supply of honey sets them up to begin brooding in earnest. By the start of April some of these colonies will want to swarm. We need to find these colonies first and make them think they have swarmed to satisfy their craving.
Once the NUCs are secured we then identify the colonies that will soon have plenty of hatching brood. If all goes well we hope to conduct the first of our three package events by April 10th. It takes these colonies between 3 to 4 weeks to recover from having their bees shaken out of them. Because of that we can only shake about 1/3 to 1/2 of the colonies per event.
Time To Shake Bees
They can’t sit around for several days waiting for the weather to break. We haven’t figured out yet how to have enough of our own queens ready for all the packages. It is our goal. In the mean time queens need to be ordered months in advance.