Repopulating the Hives

In April of this year, we began efforts to repopulate our existing hives. We purchased two different types of bees from suppliers in Indiana. 6 hives were filled with Carniolan bees and 4 were filled with Minnesota Hygenics. Minnesota Hygenics have been bred to have a stronger resistance to Varroa mites and possibly colder weather. By sourcing bees from the same area, we are more likely to see the bees able to survive winter for this location. Unfortunately, we learned that our bees had been wintered in a warmer climate. We brought in enough bees to restock our 10 hives with plans to start 3 nucs. From this we were able to do on the spot queen rearing and move the extra queens with some bees to form 11 hives and 2 nucs. This wasn’t the combination we were working towards but indicates that our hives were doing well and we had more bees than anticipated.

When the packaged bees arrived, we were able to place an empty hive box over the package of bees on top of the hive and allow them to crawl out of the package. This was a new approach for us in populating bee hives and made it easier on the bees instead of shaking them into the hive. This year, we are keeping our hives in 2 different locations in hopes that any adverse weather will only affect one area of hives. The locations are different in elevation which could help with foggy conditions affecting the bees.

Usually when placing bees into a new hive, they have to coat the comb before they can begin making honey. During this time, the bees are not making honey and need to be fed sugar water as they build out the comb. Since the original bees were lost suddenly, there was still honey left in the hive. We were able to use the drawn out frames of honey as we started the new hives, so we did not have to feed the new bees sugar water as much as normal when starting the new hives. This also made less work for the new bees so they could begin to grow their population more quickly.

Due to having to repopulate our hives, we expect our honey production for the 2017 year to be lower than in previous years. The expectation is that first year hives will not produce any extra honey for harvesting. The hope is there will be some honey produced thanks to the help the bees had starting out with honey already being available in the hives.

Raising bees is always a new learning experience every day. It will be exciting to see how this season goes.