June 2026 Newsletter

What a beautiful spring we have been having! Rain finally came and the bees appreciated it. Our water source on campus has been really busy, and we’ve had to refill it often. A few of our parent colonies needed dividing twice to prevent swarming. Hopefully your divides went well and/or your packages are growing well!

June management highlights: You should have divided any overwintered hives by now and possibly added a second deep to your packages. Don’t forget to test for mites monthly and make sure your colonies have space to store nectar as the main nectar flow should be coming on soon.

If you started your colonies from packages, they are likely in their second deep now.  The general rule is to add another box once they have filled up 80% of the box they are in.  Remember to bring up a frame with some resources (not brood) into the new box to encourage the bees to move up.  Bringing brood up into a new box may go un/underattended.  Even if you are starting on all new equipment (foundation) you can stop feeding sugar syrup when adding a second deep box. You can feed them if you want, it won’t hurt them, but if they have a big enough population for a second deep box, they should have sufficient foragers to bring in the food they need. Do not feed if you are putting honey supers on.

Your overwintered divided colonies (parents) with older queens should be in at least 3 deep boxes or 2 deep boxes with supers to prevent them from storing the incoming nectar in the brood space. A strong colony on a strong nectar flow can fill up 2 supers in a week so make sure they have enough supers until the main nectar flow is over, typically in July.

If your overwintered hive swarmed, you can let the remaining bees try and raise a new queen. The whole process takes about a month before a new queen begins laying, and inspections can easily disrupt the requeening process, so inspections should be kept to a minimum. If in doubt they are successfully raising a new queen, you can give them a frame with eggs and young larvae from another colony.  If they are successfully raising a new queen, this will simply boost their population, but if the requeening failed, they will try and raise another queen from the young brood.

If your colony still has a laying queen but you see swarm cells with larvae, I don’t encourage knocking down the cells to prevent swarming. Once the colony is building swarm cells, they are already deep into the swarming process and dividing them is usually the best option.

Test for mites even if you’ve decided to treat, then test again after treating to see if the treatment worked.  Always read the label on treatments, even if you’ve used them before, as formulations and recommendations change from year to year.

As always, you can send questions and photos to the Bee Squad at [email protected].

Happy Beekeeping! -Jenny