Between a trip to Costa Rica, dance lessons in January/February and a slew of other things, the year has started off with a bang. But, all of this activity has left very little time for the bees, sadly. To my knowledge, I have never waited until the first few days of April for my first “post Winter” look in the hives. By this time, I have already looked in all hives and probably have a dozen nucs up and rolling! But, this year has been different. I have drastically reduced my hive count from many dozens to “8 to 10” over the last couple of years, but I still need to get out there in February for the best results!
For 2025, my first look was this past Saturday, April 5. I started with the Home Apiary in Goochland. In the Fall, we had 3 full hives (one of them a bit light) and 1 Nuc for overwinternig. As of Saturday, we only had 2 full hives remaining. One was if full swarm mode with open queen cells. I’d guess the first ones will be capped by April 8 and swarming will take place later in the week. I created two nucs from this hive, one with a couple of queen cells and one (seemingly – I can miss em sometimes) without any queen cells (just with eggs.)
The second hive was starting to build out, with capped brood, a few drone cells but a lot of room to grow. I installed a queen excluder on this one, but otherwise left the population alone to continue build out until I create a Nuc or two from it.
