From Steve Donohoe's blog post of the same title, this covers all of the important beekeeping things that matter during the springtime. It covers feeding bees early on, then providing space, dealing with colonies of different sizes, equalisation, reversing boxes, difference between drawn comb and foundation, and even a little nod towards early queen rearing.
Hello, welcome to the Walrus and the Honey Bee Podcast. I'm Imogen, a perfectly formed AI helper, and today I'll be reading Steve Donohoe's blog post from 15th March 2025. It's called Beekeeping Essentials: The Critical Spring Period. Steve tells me that this spring is well and truly underway, with colonies growing fast and building drone comb. Many of his nucleus colonies are now moved into hives, and over wintered hives now have a super. There is a flow, probably from blackthorn or cherry blossom, and pollen is piling in from willow and crocus or maybe early dandelion. If you don't provide space, the bees will start to get ideas about swarming next month.
Anyway, grab yourself a cup of tea, or whatever it is you fancy, and listen to this.
I seem to have been quite busy lately, resulting in a lack of blog posts. A cynic might suggest that the real reason is that I have nothing much more to say, or that there are so many sources of beekeeping information nowadays that mine will be drowned out, so what’s the point? Well, the point is that, even if nobody ever reads my blog, the very act of creating and maintaining it gives a semblance of structure and purpose. Such things are important to me, as I need all the help I can get as far as structure and purpose are concerned. Anyway, we are now in the critical spring period, so I’m going to write about that.
This is a period of (hopefully) rapid colony expansion. Early on, before there are good nectar sources, this increased colony activity – foraging for pollen and keeping brood warm – will use up a lot of the honey in the hive. Feeding may be needed to keep the bees marching forwards rather than being held back. I have had to feed over half of my nucleus colonies and about 10% of my full-sized hives (the ones with bees in, of course). Until I see an orange-yellow explosion of dandelions in bloom, I will keep checking on colonies to see if they require food. Once I have started to feed, I keep it going until the dandelion bloom.
If a colony can grow rapidly during spring, there is a good chance that it will make a honey crop, assuming the weather gods oblige. However, those little ones, with bees on only three frames, are too far behind. It takes bees to make bees. Even if a queen is a super-prolific laying machine, she cannot do her thing if there aren’t enough worker bees to keep the brood warm and feed it. The question is, why is this colony smaller than the rest? Is something wrong, or do they just need a boost in bee numbers to show their brilliance (as a certain Canadian bee farmer might say).
Unless there are signs of disease, I will usually give the smaller colonies a chance. Boosting them with frames of sealed brood is probably wrong, for tiny colonies. I suppose if all the brood is literally emerging, it would be fine. What I do is swap the hive position with a stronger colony. Simply swapping places will boost the number of worker bees in the smaller one, giving the queen a chance to show her stuff. If she responds, and lays well, this is good. Otherwise, she’s not up to par and needs to be squished, and the colony combined with another. Another option is to place the weaker colony above a strong one, with an excluder between. The bees tend to equalise, allowing the queen heading the smaller colony the chance to get cracking.
This spring, many of my colonies are looking big and strong; they will need space quite soon. Providing space for bees and brood allows them to carry along their rapid growth trajectory, but only if they are a good size. Cavernous space is not helpful to smaller colonies, and is probably detrimental. There are all sorts of possibilities, and here are a few:
Reversing
I have now gone around all of my colonies, changed floors if required, fed if needed, and treated with Apivar strips. I like to see a clean floor after the winter, but sometimes floors are hideous, and need to be changed. We swap the dirty floor for a nice clean one, then either take the old one away for cleaning (if it’s plastic) or scrape and scorch it with a blow torch (if it’s wood). I prefer the wood floors that I make, but some hives need to be matched with plastic floors (Anel hives, for example). Incidentally, I now tape a sheet of correx onto the Anel floors as I think they are too ‘open’; some ventilation is great, but not the whole floor area in my opinion.
For my colonies that went into winter with a super on the floor, I have now reversed the boxes. The brood box goes on the (clean) floor, then an excluder, and then the super that spent winter down below. I have never found the queen in the super in this situation, but I still have a quick check. After this procedure, the bees have space overhead, and occasionally a little honey. It’s drawn comb, so immediately available to use. There is no nectar coming in, so the super will be used for bees rather than honey, but that’s better than having an overcrowded brood box.
I do the same thing on the occasional colonies that overwintered on double-brood boxes. In spring, the bottom box is nearly empty, so it can be reversed. I may or may not place an excluder between them. I don’t really like using Langstroth brood boxes for honey, so if I have a spare super I’d rather put that on top and take the empty brood box away.
Queen Excluders
Generally, my bees are on a single brood box, with supers above a queen excluder. I have tried leaving the excluders off, and that works well too. However, I now prefer my way. I think that keeping the excluders off probably does allow the bees to make a larger brood nest quicker, and I think it relieves any swarm pressure. However, I like to harvest my spring crop, and I can take more honey if I use excluders. Without the excluder there is often a box or two that is mixed honey and brood, which I can’t take off for extraction. With oilseed rape about, that’s unhelpful because it crystallises in the comb. Without oilseed rape, if you just want to harvest once at the end of the season, the bees will have mostly sorted everything out by then. The brood area tends to be in the second box from the floor, and the honey is above that.
Equalising
As spring progresses, some colonies will be super-strong. In fact, there will be strong, medium, and small ones. I have already covered the small ones; they need more bees. For the rest, as long as you are confident that they are free from disease, equalisation of brood frames is very beneficial. Nosema could be one reason why your small colonies are small (spring dwindling), which is also why changing frames with other colonies is a bad idea.
We move frames of sealed and emerging brood away from super-strong colonies to the medium-sized ones. The idea is to get all the honey production colonies to a similar strength by the time of the first big honey flow from trees, dandelion and/or oilseed rape. We replace removed combs with drawn comb or foundation frames. We only do this at an apiary level, and don’t move frames of brood between apiaries, to reduce our risk of spreading any disease that we haven’t spotted. My goal is to have about 5 frames of brood (equivalent to maybe 7 frames in a National hive) in all colonies around the end of April, but every season is different.
In the apiary where I have my cell builders, for raising queens, I may use excess frames of sealed brood to start the first cell builder colony of the season. Exciting times! I like to put a box of sealed brood above an already strong colony to create a ‘monster’ which will readily draw out queen cells from grafted larvae.
Honey bees will generally draw new comb from frames of foundation in late spring/early summer. It needs to be a good-sized colony, and there needs to be a flow on, either natural nectar or syrup. Another way to get drawn comb is to carry out a ‘shook swarm’ which is only something I have done when moving bees from National to Langstroth hives. Any caught swarm will soon draw out comb from foundation too, as long as they have a mated queen. Cast swarms seem more finicky, in my experience.
The point about drawn comb is that it only needs a quick tidy up by the bees, and then it is immediately available for the queen to lay in. This is important because if she has run out of space to lay her eggs, two things can happen:
1. She cannot lay eggs, so colony growth is held back
2. The bees may swarm
Both of these result in lost honey, so that’s not good.
I tend to put foundation frames (only one at a time) at the edge of the brood nest earlier on. Once we are really into big brood nests and nectar from dandelions coming in, I have no problem with sticking the foundation bang in the middle of the nest. They draw it out in no time. With nukes, the foundation always goes at the edge of the existing brood because they are smaller. It’s probably better to use up drawn empty comb early on, and switch over to foundation later into the spring and early summer.
Several excellent beekeepers that I know carry out a manipulation which generates new drawn comb, reduces swarming, and may provide an opportunity to kill nearly all the varroa mites in the hive. Here are two variations:
1) No excluder between brood boxes
Dump a box of brood frames (foundation only) above the brood box of a strong hive towards the end of the spring flow. The queen will move upstairs as the comb is drawn out, so that within a few weeks the top box has the queen and plenty of open brood. It obviously helps to have good weather; if it goes cold or wet, the flow stops and so does wax building. In such a situation, you would remove any remaining supers of honey and feed syrup.
The double-brood boxes can next be split into two separate colonies. The bottom box is moved away to a new apiary, and given a queen cell from a selected queen. The remaining box has the queen and her new brood, which is not yet sealed. This means it can be treated with oxalic acid to kill the mites, which have nowhere to hide.
The other box – the one with the older, sealed brood, can be treated later on, once that brood has emerged, but before any new brood from the new queen has been sealed.
2) Using an excluder between brood boxes
Similar to above, but the foundation frames go on top of the existing brood box, with an excluder between. Two frames of open brood are moved from downstairs to upstairs, and two frames of foundation go downstairs at the edge of the brood nest. This now draws nurse bees into the top box, but not the queen (due to the excluder). This is repeated every ten days, another two times. By then, the top box is drawn out and has several frames of sealed brood, with some honey going in too.
You could either remove the top box and give it a queen cell, as with the method (1) above, or leave it to become a honey super. In the latter case, once extracted, you have a box of drawn brood combs, which will be invaluable next season (or later in the current one).
Not only does the queen need plenty of space in which to lay her eggs, which she produces at an accelerating rate throughout the spring, but the colony needs space for the rapidly increasing number of bees too. Adding supers above the brood nest provides space for bees, and later, for nectar storage. That nectar will then be processed into honey. Yum.
As far as I’m concerned, with a strong colony, you need to get supers on early and keep adding them so that there is plenty of space. Some of my colonies require supers right now, and some already have them (see ‘reversing’ above). You are more likely to cause problems by being slow with adding supers than by adding too many. But, the colony must be strong. No point chucking loads of supers above a brood box containing five frames of bees.
Drawn comb, especially wet supers that were extracted last year, will rapidly be used by the bees. Even though they smell a bit like stale beer, they are soon cleaned up, with no issues that I’ve ever seen. However, a super full of foundation frames is not really ‘space’ to a colony of bees. It’s a big job to draw out the wax, and they aren’t going to do it unless certain conditions are met. If you want to relieve swarming pressure by providing space for bees, a super of foundation is not the answer. They will probably bugger off instead.
However, we have to get frames of foundation drawn out somehow. According to some research kindly shared by Ann Chilcott (who writes a blog called The Bee Listener) they will build comb in the supers when:
a) There is a strong nectar flow and
b) They are beginning to run out of space (meaning drawn comb)
This is why the second super, the one which goes above the super of drawn comb, could be the one with your foundation frames. Assuming the flow is on, as they fill up the first super the bees will realise that they need more comb, and will set to work on super number two. That’s the theory. I always put a couple of frames with honey on into the second super rather than have a whole box of just foundation frames.
According to what I have seen, heard, read, whatever…it doesn’t make much difference whether you put your new super at the top of the stack (over-supering) or above the brood nest at the bottom of the stack (under-supering). I do a bit of both, and the size of the stack of supers tends to be a factor. If it’s a monster, I often chuck the new super on top (less work). If there are only a couple of supers on the hive, I typically under-super because my silly walrus mind likes to think that space above the brood nest is a good thing. Furthermore, when cropping honey, with under-supering the capped frames are always at the top, making it easy to clear them and take them away.
Before I go, it would be remiss of me to ignore the best part of keeping bees. In my area, it has generally been a bit risky to consider making queens even in late spring. We sometimes get a pleasant April, and thoughts turn to grafting in May, only for it to rain for a month, leading to poorly mated queens. Not good. However, you have got to be in the lottery to win it. Depending on conditions, and the amount of spare frames of sealed brood that I can steal from colonies to make cell builders, I may start making queen cells in late spring.
If the bees are thinking of swarming, and drones are about (drones, not drone brood), then it’s time to get on with it. It’s a wonderful thing, so give it a try!
Okay, that's the end of this piece. Steve and I both hope that you found it helpful in your beekeeping. Please spread the word and share this with other beekeepers that you know. Thanks, and have a great day.