May 2026 Newsletter

Spring is in full swing! Many of you have likely made divides already, as the early arrival of pollen has stimulated a lot of brood production.  Our team has divided about half of our colonies so far!

It is warm enough in the evenings that you can remove winter covers (if you haven’t already) from your overwintered colonies. Hopefully you’ve had a chance to scrape your bottom boards of any dead bees or debris. Remember that any scraping should be done away from the colony and any pieces of scraped comb should be collected and disposed of.  Besides getting stuck to your shoes, leaving wax around can attract critters like skunks. You can flip the entrance reducer so that the opening faces down, still leaving it with the larger opening.

Overwintered colonies are ready to divide when they have eight frames of brood, so inspect weekly as they build up to that sweet spot where they are strong enough to divide but haven’t started the swarming process yet.

The tried-and-true method of dividing a colony leaves the queen (parent colony) in the original position and adding a deep brood box or honey supers above a queen excluder.  The divide should have 4 frames of brood and a few frames of nectar/honey and pollen.  You can put a caged queen in the divide after 12 to 24 hours and feed them 1:1 sugar syrup to help with queen acceptance.  We recommend leaving the cork in over the candy plug of the queen cage so that the bees do not release her too quickly. Hand-releasing the queen after 3 days gives the best chance for acceptance. If you prefer to use the slow release method, you can remove the cork and place a piece of tape with a small hole in it to slow the bees consumption of the candy plug.

If you have trouble finding the queen, you can put queen excluders between the brood boxes for at least 4 days before dividing. Then separate all the boxes and the one with eggs in it can be your parent colony. This method is described in detail on pg. 91 of the Beekeeping in Northern Climates Manual(http://z.umn.edu/beemanual).

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.

As always, inspections should focus on finding healthy brood. Once you have seen eggs, healthy 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, especially in spring, so the threshold for treatment is low. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Enjoy these spring days with your bees as they build up for the nectar flow!

Jenny Warner