As
we know honeybees
and flowers form one of the most beautiful partnerships in nature. The
beekeeper must keep an eye on his local environment and be ready for
whenever a possible honey-flow may take place.
To maximize a honey-flow you have a good local knowledge of flowering
season in the area around your apiary. Also of vital importance is having
your colonies up to strength with a good laying queen in order to take
advantage of the flow. The honeybee will travel up to three miles in
search of pollen and nectar, it is no good keeping your bees in remote
areas, they need to be within as shorter range as possible for successful
foraging. It is not much use if your bees are expending so much energy
foraging away from the hive that they are consuming extra supplies which
we might harvest.After an almost dormant
period during the winter months the queen
will resume laying once the days begin to get longer and the weather
warmer. Early supplies of food arriving into the hive stimulate the queen
to increase her egg laying. It is standard practise amongst most
beekeepers to feed their bees in the spring period. This will prevent
supplies running out and leading to one of the most common causers for
colony lost which is starvation. It is possible to manipulate this
process to bring on a colony so that they are ready for the early spring
rapeseed flowering which takes place in mid April.
Once the colony is re-established again in the
spring the queen will continue to lay with an increasing rate. This can
reach a maximum around the July period when a fertile queen may lay up to
one thousand eggs in a day. At this time of year a good colony may have up
to sixty thousand bees. This will mostly be made up of flying and nurse
bees with a few hundred drones. As new food resources becomes less and the
days grow shorter the queen will reduce her
egg laying. This will see the colony reduce in size through natural
wastage. (older bees dying off and drones not being allowed back into the
hive) The honey will have been removed from the supers by the beekeeper
and the bees will be fed possible a sugar solution to allow winter stocks
to be replaced.
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