May 2025 Newsletter

It’s a busy time of year for us beekeepers and spring 2025 is coming in fast! As I write this, most of our overwintered colonies at the University aren’t ready for dividing yet (some are), but there has been a lot of pollen coming in and the bees seem to be building up a bit early this year.

If you got packages last month, they should still be in one deep.  It will take about a month before there is a big change in population as new bees emerge.  Inspections can be brief, see that the queen is laying and keep them supplied with pollen and sugar syrup.  Keep feeding pollen sub even if they are bringing some in until they are in 2 deep boxes.  Make sure the syrup isn’t moldy or fermented when you replace the feeder.  You can give them a second deep box when the first is ~80% full.  Move a frame with no brood on it from the bottom box and put it in the second deep to encourage the bees to move up.

For overwintered colonies, you can remove the winter covers and moisture boards when night time temperatures are above 40 degrees.  Scrape the bottom boards away from the colony and face the entrance reducer down on the larger opening.  You can do reversals as long as you aren’t breaking up the brood nest to give the bees space to move up.  Keep an eye on the brood nest, they are growing quickly, and plan to divide them when they have 8-10 frames of brood.

For dividing, the goal is to have the parent hive (overwintered queen and 4 or more frames of brood) in the original location and putting the divide (4 or 5 frames of bees and a few frames of nectar and pollen) to a new spot. If you are having trouble finding the queen, you can use queen excluders in advance to determine which box she is in, this trick is described in detail in the Beekeeping in Northern Climates Third Edition manual (page 91).(http://z.umn.edu/beemanual).   Many foragers will leave the divide and return to the parent so try and give the divide frames with lots of bees on them.

For the parent, they should be in 2 deep boxes with some open frames for the queen to lay in in the second deep box. You can put a queen excluder and two honey supers on the second deep box. If you are planning on overwintering them, you can add a third deep box.

Feed the divide 1:1 sugar syrup to help in introducing the new queen. You can introduce your queen using the slow-release method.  The queen should have come in a cage with queen candy (not a marshmallow).  After 5-7 days, check to be sure the queen was released from the cage.  Check to see if she is laying eggs on the next inspection.  You can remove the feeder when they need a second deep box.

All inspections should focus on finding healthy brood, once you have seen eggs, well-fed larvae and capped pupae and determined they have enough space you can close them up.  Overwintered colonies should be tested for mites and treated if they have more than 3 mites per 100 bees.  Most mites are under the cappings, so the threshold for treatment is low.

Good luck dividing and managing packages!

Jenny