tulip popular flower windfall

Today I discovered the first 2018 windfall of the tulip popular flower kind.  Tulip poplar flowers could be a valuable nectar flow for the bees if the weather cooperates - no hard rainfall please.

In late February for one hive and mid-March for the other hive, I checkerboard the honey cap using foundation-less frames with no drawn comb. Both overwintered hives are flying with nearly equal vigor and have an amazing low number of small hive beetles during hive inspections, but are not drawing comb as I expected.

On March 29th I hung 8-frame deep swarm traps from crepe myrtle trees and now wait for the first scout bees - apparently I'm waiting impatiently.

2017 nectar flow

Bee cooperative weather is supporting a strong nectar flow of holly bushes, white clover, spiderwort and tulip poplar. Native mining bees and carpenter bees are extremely active too.

This year, I started to checkerboard the honey cap of over-wintered hives on March 6th. Since then, I check the honey cap every three weeks. My version of checkerboarding uses foundation-less frames with no drawn comb. Yesterday, I added another medium box to each hive. I don't know how long this nectar flow will last, but I have monstrously tall hives.

My swarm capture is drawing comb and growing in size too, but at a much slower pace than over-wintered hives.  

2017 spring markers & honey cap

What feels odd about the first photo?  Maybe it's the expectation that the flowers are larger than bees - not in this case of this holly bush. Here's another prolific flowering tree in the neighborhood - Carolina Cherry Laurel appears in the second photo.

                     2009 2010 2011 2016 2017
                      day  day  day  day  day
Bradford Pear          65   79   60        56
Carpenter Bees         68   87   72        63
Acer palmatum leaf out 73   92   77        64
Carolina Cherry Laurel 73   97   83        57
Pollen Count over 1000                76   51

The point of tracking these day-of-year values is to synchronize my beekeeping practices with spring weather.  The first step/acknowledgement is to admit that there is no such thing as an average year- we have never experienced an average year of weather.  My journal contains spring marker dates which sometimes appear in different months.  So, dates are converted to day-of-year to make the comparison between years easier.  I'm experimenting with comparing first pollen count over 1000.  Pollen count is easy to acquire, loosely correlates with temperature and maybe more objective than my journal notes.

I first saw Steve Page speak at Georgia Beekeepers Association in 2015 on the topic of Sustainable Beekeeping.   Do you want to learn more, sign-up for "It's Time To..." the free email mentoring of Coweta Sustainable Beekeeping.  As Steve is influenced by other beekeepers - so, I'm influenced by Steve and have adapted my beekeeping management which uses Kelly foundationless (F Style) frames.  Last Monday (day 65), I removed the bee cozy and checker-boarded the honey cap of my hives.