All the honey bees were hunkered down for the long cold trip to their new central valley California winter bee yard. This day was a year in the making and more work than we anticipated. Isn’t that always the case when you try something new.
This trip isn’t the first leg of our sustainable beekeeping plan for area beekeepers. You may ask how can shipping colonies 2000 miles away make for a sustainable solution? I’m glad you asked. Let me briefly take you through the process.
EXPERIMENT:
This experiment began April 2018 with 26 NUCs. The NUCs were produced from our original wintered stock. Throughout the summer we increased those 26 colonies to 101. the increases were produced through several different methods; we caught swarms, removed bees from buildings, and divided colonies from the original 26. Each time we divided a colony we adding one of our newly raised survivor queens to a fresh new colony.
FALL ADJUSTMENT:
Our goal of 100 colonies at season’s end was achieved but it was clear by mid October not all of the new colonies were strong enough to make it through the winter. We made the decision to combine some of the smaller colonies with stronger ones for a new total of 69 hives. Next year it’s the plan to increase to 200 new colonies except have them much stronger earlier. OK, true we’re still learning.
WINTERING THE BEES
It’ll be a short winter for our bees. In fact it’s likely our bees believe they’ve made it through winter and can now prepare for spring. Northern Illinois’ extra cold November worked to their favor. Had we moved the bees before this cold, the milder weather in California would keep them thinking they need to stay bloodless for the oncoming winter. It’s our hope they begin to brood up and get ready for the California spring that starts at the end of January.
Our job now must be to keep them thinking it’s spring. We’ll do this by feeding them a spring nectar like syrup and plenty of pollen so they can raise new brood. In February the almond trees will begin to bloom and it’s then they will know spring has sprung. The rich pollen of the almonds will prompt them to brood up earnestly.
AFTER THE ALMONDS
Still mighty cold in Chicago during March our happy spring bees will want more spring weather that’s why we intend to bring them to Georgia for a month or so first. During our time in Georgia we’ll raise daughter queens from the best of our over wintered survivors (2 year old). The colones emerging from the almonds will be full of brood and ready to swarm. We’ll assist this process by creating an artificial swarm through the process of splitting each colony and adding a new virgin survivor queen to the split.
SUSTAINABLE? WE HOPE SO
By keeping some of our breeder queens in Northern Illinois through winter and finding more survivor queens during the summer we believe we’ll have a continued supply of area bee genetics to withstand the stresses our bees encounter in Chicago-land.
Once we make multiple splits in early spring for area beekeepers and ourselves we believe we can have enough Northern Illinois hearty bees available every year and early enough to take advantage of our great springs and summers.
