Quick check of first year hives that were started on bee day. We are currently dealing with hot weather and are starting to experience a nectar dearth. in our area because there hasn’t been a lot of rain and natural bloom. This generally happens each summer when the heat really hits. Depending on your location, you may feel the effects of this to a greater or lesser degree, bees in town may not experience it as much because many people have flowers and gardens that will be getting watered throughout this time. Bees on the edge of the desert will usually experience it, and bees near farm fields may depending on the crops. On our farm, we are currently in a dearth and see robbing behavior, the weeds and trees that bloomed earlier are done and it is dry. Our raspberry and pumpkin fields will start blooming this week so we know that our bees will have a good food source near them coming in a few days. Paying attention to what is blooming near your bees now and what will start blooming helps us look forward to what we might need to look for in our hives in upcoming inspections.
Basically, look for liquid nectar on the edges, if they don’t have enough nectar coming in they will have to start uncapping their stores, ideally you want to avoid that during the summer months if you can! Some wild plants plants that will be good for bees in the near future will be clovers and sunflowers, but the nectar will be determined by the moisture in the soil.
In this video, we found a hive that didn’t show evidence of a queen, (no eggs and no young larva) we show you one way of dealing with that.
