Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: .30WCF on February 18, 2024, 11:58:08 pm
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Didn?t see this thread yet.
I?ve had maples and daffodils on bloom for about two weeks now. Looks like the peach and Bradford wont be far behind.
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Oy, you are right! We were all kind of bad at Follow the Bloom last year, so let's all pledge to be better this year! :grin: I'll sticky it.
I've got some kind of pollen coming in, I assume it's maples and/or willows. We don't have any on our property and I haven't been anywhere this past week to check. Some daffodils are budded. My pussie willow stick I planted last year has 3 buds and 1 little fuzzy kitten. :cheesy:
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The pear trees busted 2 days ago, my citrus are trying. And Im way behind on swarm prevention due to the weather.
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Unusually warm right now waiting for the other shoe to drop and get another cold snap. That said I've been seeing daffodils on south facing slopes of hills, tulip leaves are coming up in my flower bed, clover is turning thick and green with a couple flowers I saw in a customer's yard last week. Today I saw that some of the Bradford pears are opening buds. Not full flowers but only a couple days away from that
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Pear trees are blooming here also, Willow trees are buzzing with bees.
Jim Altmiller
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Maples are fully open and have been for maybe 2 weeks. Today I was walking the dogs over at WCU and saw honey bees all over some ornamental cherries they planted last year after finishing some new dorms. The tulip magnolias are about to start too.
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Bees are making honey, they are all over a yellow vine flower. The willow tree nectar is slowing down.
Jim Altmiller
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Bees are making honey, they are all over a yellow vine flower. The willow tree nectar is slowing down.
Jim Altmiller
So were going to see exactly how bad Carolina Jasmine is for bees. This will be better than a University study.
Actually they might be cats claw because the bees dont visit the Carolina Jasmine that is near any of my yards.
The reason I say this is I actually dont know how to tell the difference between them.
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I had a white jasmine bush 50 feet from my apiary in Jacksonville with up to 20 hives. It filled the entire area with a sweet smell. The bees never touched it.
Jim Altmiller
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Early spring trees are blooming in middle Georgia. Red Maples for 3-4 weeks now. Here is a peach blossom from today.
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Peach blossoms on my tree are spent. Dandelions, hyacinths, forsythia are all going
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Pear trees are spent.
Cherry is coming in.
Buford and Nellie R Stevens hollies are coming in.
Clover is all in our lawns now.
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Lots of Holly and clover around the house here.
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We are expecting a hard freeze tonight, which will probably kill all our blooms! :cry:
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Same here. Well, 31 forecasted, so it could go either way, but if I was a betting man. . .
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Then you guys have a chance at scraping by. We are expecting 25F. :sad:
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20 F this morning. I think in town a few of the hardier bulbs are blooming, like crocuses and maybe daffadils. Nothing out where I live except maybe red maples on warm days.
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Well, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. The tulip magnolias took a pretty bad hit, but the cherries and pears seem to have come through pretty well.
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Yeah. Ours wasn?t bad at all. I mean fire in the wood stove for sure, but I think the trees made it. Another little potential threat on this coming Sunday, then we should be in the clear, however I have spent some chilly mornings in the Turkey woods. That?s still about 3.5 weeks away.
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I'm hoping that my neighbor's hive made it. They had a lot of brood going and now we're getting a cold snap. My understanding is that the cluster will freeze themselves to death in an effort to keep the brood warm.
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A short lived cold snap is probably no problem for them.
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They will probably be ok. Let us know.
Phillip
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My understanding is that the cluster will freeze themselves to death in an effort to keep the brood warm.
I think this is a sometimes thing, and it really depends on if the bees have honey close by to replenish their energy, because often they won't abandon brood. But I've also had colonies that couldn't cover all their brood during a cold snap just save what they could and let the rest freeze.
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I asked him how they're doing and he said that they're warm in there. It sounds like there are some variables that come into play...like how cold for how long, how healthy is the colony to start with and is the brood small enough for them to cover adequately.
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>My understanding is that the cluster will freeze themselves to death in an effort to keep the brood warm.
The problem with a cold snap when there is brood is that they starve because they won't leave the brood to get to food. They don't freeze.
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>My understanding is that the cluster will freeze themselves to death in an effort to keep the brood warm.
The problem with a cold snap when there is brood is that they starve because they won't leave the brood to get to food. They don't freeze.
Sheesh, I'd never make it in that job. I'm a dedicated worker but I do have my limits. :cool:
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The spicebushes and silverberries are getting going around here.
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The early flow mustn't be too good because my bees aren't drawing yet. I weirdly don't seem to have written this down in my records for previous years, but I feel like this is kind of late to not have seen any new comb.
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So far no new comb here either Reagan...
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My small pear and apples are just blooming. Mature trees are done.
At some point I need to get in them and take a look. They still have the excluders on from last year.
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Dogwoods and apples in bloom here. Also black cherry (not a cherry tree, it's closely related to chokecherry) is going strong
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The redbuds are starting here. I saw the first queen bumble bee of the season on the silverberry today.
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Blackberry and holly are in full bloom as well as clover.
Jim Altmiller
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I saw some redbuds in town. Nothing out in the country yet except henbit.
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Black Locust bloom is just finishing up here. White clover has been thick for weeks and blackberry are coming on strong now.
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Thanks for your post Caashenb. Blackberries will soon be blooming here too!
Phillip
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The wild plums are starting to bloom now. The dutch clover isn't blooming but it's up and I would guess it will bloom soon. No dandelions yet. Fruit trees in town have buds and look like they will bloom on the next warm day.
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Privit is blooming now
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The dogwoods are open.
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A few dandelions yesterday.
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I saw these bees on this water lilly on the Caribbean island of Martinique a few days ago. Their buzzing sounded strange... Until I remembered they only speak in French on the island.
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The early flow mustn't be too good because my bees aren't drawing yet. I weirdly don't seem to have written this down in my records for previous years, but I feel like this is kind of late to not have seen any new comb.
Just my observation. The bees, if in swarm mode dont draw like the bees in preservation mode do. When I see white wax, thats my first sign the bees that I didnt keep up with and were in reproduction mode are ending that cycle, and going into self preservation.
The Blackberry is in full bloom almost over. Spring TiTi, Black TiTi, Buckwheat, Whatever "you" call it is now blooming, quarter way through. galberry is blooming. The chinese tallow looks to be about 2.5 to 3 weeks out. And Im hoping the Palmetto Gods are good to me this year
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Just my observation. The bees, if in swarm mode dont draw like the bees in preservation mode do. When I see white wax, thats my first sign the bees that I didnt keep up with and were in reproduction mode are ending that cycle, and going into self preservation.
Sorry, I don't know what you mean by "preservation mode". Do you just mean the opposite of swarming, like just normal colony operations? I have some small colonies that definitely aren't in swarm mode right now, and they aren't drawing either.
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Wild plums are in full bloom. My crabapple bloomed yesterday. I took bees to an apple orchard Saturday and it was just starting to bloom.
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Mr Bush, I know nothing of crabapples for the consideration of bees. Do apples produce a fair amount of nectar for honey? If so is it a light honey or dark honey?
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The bees are always all over the crabapple tree in my yard. They certainly work apples. I have no idea what the honey is like. This is the build up. They will burn it all up raising brood.
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vetch is all starting to bloom today.
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Saw Low Bush Gallberry in bloom today. High Bush Gallberry has small buds.
Jim Altmiller
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The crabapples just opened here too.
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I?m seeing High and Low Bush Galleries starting to bloom as well Black Gum (Tupelo) and a week ago I saw palmetto buds were starting. If this is the case all over this area then it will bee a repeat of last year and a very poor honey harvest.
Jim Altmiller
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on photo is of a Compacta Holly, a landscape shrub used for foundation planting. I think it makes a nice 8-10 foot small tree form if limbed up. The bees are all over it today, with its little, almost unnoticeable flowers.
The large flower is from a Tulip Poplar tree in my neighborhood, a very tall, straight woodland tree, and one of the major nectar flow sources in Georgia.
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American Baskeflower beginning here.
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The black cherry is starting here, and I saw open tulip poplars in Cherokee earlier in the week, so ours should be close, if not also open. My poplars are so large I need binoculars to see the flowers. :grin: Hopefully we'll get some nectar coming in soon. I had to give two of my small colonies some extra honey today. Pollen is fine though, I took a pint out of my pollen trap after less than 24 hours! :shocked:
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Blackberries are blooming pretty heavily here.
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Blackberries are blooming pretty heavily here.
AAHH!! Send them my way! :grin:
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And MiracleGro. Apparently they like that stuff. The last two times I?ve fed the stuff I sprouted, the bees came and drank all the blue water.
There are several 5-6 down in the cups, but you can see one here just getting ready to land in a tomato cup stage left.
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Blackgum is in bloom. I can hear the bees a fair distance from the tree.
Jim Altmiller
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The black locust is starting now, as is the multiflora rose, so I might be in the clear. We'll see what things look like in the hives next weekend.
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This is turning out to be a smashing year for black locust and the blackberries are just starting to open! :grin: Unfortunately it's supposed to rain tomorrow, so we'll see if I manage to get any inspections in or not. :sad:
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I noticed a couple day ago that the blackberries(tame) are starting to bloom. Again, like last year they are early. This year they are about 3-4 weeks early. Pretty much everything is early this year.
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Here is a picture of two Tupelo/Black Gum trees in full bloom. You can?t see any flowers because they are tiny and all green. From where I took this picture I can still clearly hear the buzz of the bees. It is probably close to 90 feet and if I had better hearing I could probably go out a lot farther.
Jim Altmiller
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Blackhaw is blooming here
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The blackberries have opened and IT IS ON! Everyone, even the little hives, are drawing now, and I've got several hives with filled supers already. I can't even believe how quickly this turned around on me.