What is the sure sign of a beekeeper? Well, of course, the first flying bees and the sun's rays. However, there is no reason to rush and you should give the bees peace. However, in Hämeenlinna, certain shelters are located in such a warm place that we could guess when the meter showed plus four degrees, that there have been flies in the yard. The other week we went to check the condition of the bees at the first hives. It is important to check that the bees can fly out of the hive, that there is enough food, and if you find dead nests, it is good to close their flight openings so that possible diseases do not spread to nests in the surrounding area.
Luckily for us, the nests looked good. Now it's been a very cold winter, which has happened to be during our nursery, so I'm worried about how the bees are doing. Fortunately, however, the cold is not a problem for nests from the start, as long as the nest is strong enough to maintain heat.
What can cause nest death outside the flight season. If we start in the fall, the first problem in the fall is the mite, if the mite population is large and the bees do not get healthy winter bees and the winter is challenging. The nest can die if the caretaker does not have time to make preventive measures. Especially if the ticks have time to cause diseases such as wing rot in the nests, the game is quite possibly lost. The second is the robbing of nests, i.e. one nest robs another weaker nest, in which case the nest goes weak against the winter or dies of hunger, even before winter. At this point, however, the keeper must monitor the behavior of the nests and minimize robbery with his actions. For example, don't leave honey near the hives. Then come the bears. Bears destroy nests in winter before hibernation and in spring when they wake up very hungry. Bears search the nests for larvae for protein and honey. Bears are a big and growing problem in bee farms. When spring comes, gray-headed woodpeckers can also make holes in nests and destroy even a strong nest even in one day. After woodpeckers, ants are also very bad and destroy even a strong nest in one or two days. In other words, nests can also die due to external factors. A bad bee population or a bad queen can also lead to the death of the hive. In spring, you can also find so-called buzzard nests, when the mother lays no more eggs than boys, i.e. buzzards. In this case, the condition of the nest begins to decline when no new workers are born in the nest, which would take care of and promote the condition and growth of the nest. It is therefore important to monitor the health of the queen bee as well.
The topic went to the beehives, but now that the food situation of the bees has been observed, we look at the bees' adequate food supply and wait for warm weather, that the willow will start to bloom and the bees will be able to collect pollen and honey for food. In this way, the nests begin to hatch and grow little by little until the summer, so that the nest is strong enough when the honey collection season starts.