The colony's year

It's a sunny afternoon in late September. Anne walks out to her hives and finds something that alarms her. On the ground in front of the entrance are dozens of big, blunt bees, some dead, some crawling. Every so often a worker drags another one out and drops it. Is her colony sick? No. Her colony is getting ready for winter. And to understand why, you need to know the colony's year.

A colony is not the same size all year. Ontario's ministry describes colonies ranging from fewer than a thousand bees to more than fifty thousand. The colony grows and shrinks with the seasons, and almost everything you do as a beekeeper is about helping it do that at the right time.

Let's start in winter, because in Ontario the year really turns on it. From late fall to early spring, the bees form a tight cluster inside the hive. They don't hibernate. They shiver their flight muscles to make heat and eat their stored honey to fuel it. A big cluster stays warm more easily and uses less food than a small one.

The size of that cluster is mostly fixed when winter begins. The bees can't raise many replacements in the cold. So a colony goes into winter with the bees it has, and those have to last. In the Ontario colonies surveyed for twenty twenty four to twenty twenty five, every one was wintered outdoors.

As the days lengthen, the queen starts laying again, and the colony begins to build. To raise brood, the bees keep the centre of the nest at about thirty five degrees Celsius, even on cold nights. This is when colonies can starve, because they are eating fast and there is little to gather yet.

Then the first food arrives. In southern Ontario, willows, early fruit trees and maples give the bees early nectar and pollen from about mid April into May. Dandelion follows, one of the first big nectar sources of the year. The Ontario Beekeepers' Association advises that spring feeding can stop once dandelions are in bloom.

With food coming in, the colony grows quickly. A strong colony that runs out of room will try to split itself in two. That is swarming, and it happens in late spring and early summer. It is how colonies reproduce, and it is the big management challenge of the year. We have a whole lecture on it later.

Next comes the main summer flow, when clovers, basswood and other plants bloom and a strong colony can store honey fast. This is when you add honey boxes on top. Flows vary a great deal from year to year and place to place, which is why local knowledge matters, and why a local club is worth joining.

In late summer, beekeepers in many areas see a slower period, and then the fall flow arrives, on goldenrod and asters. In Ontario, honey boxes can stay on as late as mid September.

And now the most important part of the year, the one that decides whether your colony survives. In late summer and early fall, the queen lays the eggs that become the winter bees. Those are the long lived bees we met in the last lecture. They must be raised healthy, with low mite levels, and with plenty of food stored around them.

As fall comes, the colony slims down for winter. The queen lays less. And the drones, who are no use in winter and would only eat the stores, are pushed out of the hive. That is what Anne was watching. The workers were evicting the drones. Her colony was doing exactly the right thing.

Now let's change one fact. Suppose the fall is unusually warm and long, as it was in eastern Canada in twenty twenty four. The queen keeps laying longer, so there is more brood. That sounds good, but Varroa mites breed in brood, so a long warm fall can mean more mites going into winter. The calendar said October. The bees said summer.

The mistake beginners make is managing by the calendar. The Ontario Beekeepers' Association puts it simply: good beekeepers make decisions based on conditions, not calendar dates. Watch what is blooming, what the weather is doing, and what you see inside the hive.

Here is the rule, in one breath. An Ontario colony winters in a cluster, builds up in spring, swarms if crowded in late spring and early summer, stores honey through the summer and fall flows, and raises its long lived winter bees in late summer, so follow the bees, not the calendar.

Next, we open a frame and learn what a healthy colony looks like.