Introduction:

BEEKEEPING IN THE NORTHEAST - An account of my beekeeping, not a treatise of expertise, but for friends & family who wish to keep bees vicariously through me, and for the occasional apiarist passer-by.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Spring North vs Spring Boston

I'm reading two books by beekeepers just south of here. My dilemma is knowing how long I can wait to take a peek and most especially, slip a pollen patty into the hive. The books say end of February but we are about a month behind Boston for the oncoming of Spring. We are in a very normal, gradual warm up pattern. The sap is flowing, but bees can hardly move at below 57 degrees F. My hope is that as temps come up above freezing the bees start to move as a group to areas of the hive with more food. I don't want to do anything to trigger a foraging response, least they take off and can't get back resulting in last spring's catastrophe.

Here are the temps I'm dealing with as well as 1 foot of snow pack:

6 am



18°F


9 am



22°F


12 pm



33°F


3 pm



36°F


6 pm



33°F


9 pm



28°F

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