Comment

Comment by Diana Calkins on May 4, 2013 at 7:16pm

Actually, this type of weather change is common up here.  I've seen it many times.  Not every year, thank goodness.  One year, the latest hard freeze we experienced was on May 16.  When Robert was a boy in the early 50's, he saw snow in the early part of June.  Interesting though, we've had pears every year since planting our tree, even when the apples didn't make, and this is the first year the pear blossoms froze and didn't bloom.  No pears.

Comment by Paul McCarty on May 4, 2013 at 6:13pm

My breeding nucs were due to hatch three days ago - so I checked them today. Lot's of frozen bees. I opened up a few Queen cells and they were frozen and dead. I combined them all into one big nuc and gave them a living queen. I will try again later. I still have an 8 frame raising queens that probably made it. I will let them go through their cycle.

The problem is that the queen cells were along the bottom edge of the comb. When the bees clustered, the queen cells were not in the cluster. This is a problem up here, but usually later in the year near Fall. We have a very narrow window to grow queens adequately, and it seems to be getting narrower. One would think there wouldn't be 28 degree freezes in May, followed by 86 degree weather.

Comment by Rob Shepler on May 4, 2013 at 5:47pm

Diana, I think your split will be fine. You have a lot of bees and honey to keep your queen cells warm and safe through the cold nights. Where you can run into problems is in small hives like a 2 bar breeding nuc, not enough bees to keep all of the brood warm. I had cells ready to hatch and set one up yesterday, hope they made it!

Comment by Diana Calkins on May 4, 2013 at 5:00pm

Would the freeze kill the queen cells inside a hive box?  I hope not.  How do you know they are dead?  Has the appearance changed?  Or did they not hatch when they were supposed to?

Comment by Paul McCarty on May 4, 2013 at 3:34pm

I really hate late freezes. Killed all the queens I was hatching.

Comment by Paul McCarty on May 3, 2013 at 9:15pm

Velvet mesquite and creosote just popped open in the desert a few days ago.

Comment by Paul McCarty on May 3, 2013 at 9:14pm

I picked up a hive today that has been abandoned for 20 years. It was full of bees. They stung someone up real bad last week, so they had to go. Nice and well behaved for me though. They were living in an abandoned, termite ridden hive under an old mesquite down by the "Theme Park in the Making".

Comment by Paul McCarty on May 3, 2013 at 9:11pm

We still have some stuff blooming. The mustard has just started and should carry them a little too.

Comment by Diana Calkins on May 3, 2013 at 8:11pm

Sorry to hear but glad you shared.  We don't seem to have a problem yet but will reduce the entrance on our smaller hive now before it starts.

Comment by Ralph N Gallegos on May 3, 2013 at 8:04pm

Sorry to hear that Rob. I've been checking my bees every chance I get, that's what I fear for my bees. as dry and desolate as it is, there all hungry.  I'm having to fill the food jars about every 2 days.

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