For those that don’t know me, I work at Flow™, and as part of my role, I manage the educational content we put together.
With the Northern Hemisphere Spring just around the corner, and things warming up already in some parts of the U.S. we are putting together some content on spring preparation and management.
I’m always so impressed with the knowledge on this Forum and thought it would be great to put together an article based on the tips and lessons learned by Forum members.
If you’d like to share your thoughts on Spring Preparation with the wider Flow community, please share in this thread. If you could share at the bottom of your post where your from and how long you’ve been beekeeping for that would be great too!
#1: Deal with the Mites Now:
Even if you did your mite treatments in the fall and your bees come through winter, mite levels can still skyrocket. Unbeknownst to you, there’s a neighbor who doesn’t treat and let’s their mite infested hives die. Your bees rob these dead-outs and the mites hop on your bees for an all expenses paid trip back to your hives. We’ve had a week of flying weather here in the mid-Atlantic US. Some of my hives that looked active were actually dead hives that were being robbed.
#2 Check Food Stores:
From my experiences here in NJ, brood rearing is 10 days away. This takes food, lots of food. More hives will die from starvation from Feb-April than November-January.