Spring anxiety: Why beekeepers are watching the weather
Spring is here, and if you're a beekeeper, that means one thing: anxiety!
Not the fun kind of anticipation. The proper, nail-biting, weather-forecast-checking, please-let-this-work kind of anxiety, here's why...
The promise of Spring
The snowdrops this year were fantastic. After months of grey skies and relentless rain, they arrived like a promise - spring is coming, hold on, better days ahead.
They're mostly over now in the South, on the turn in the North. And now the crocuses have arrived, pushing through with their bright orange stamens practically screaming at any passing bee: FOOD! HERE! NOW!
To a bee, those stamens are impossible to refuse. Tempting, abundant, arriving at exactly the right moment.
Because this is when the Queen has started laying eggs again. After months of winter dormancy, the colony is waking up. Growing. Getting ready for the busy season ahead. And all those new eggs - thousands of them - will need feeding.
The workers need pollen for protein. They need nectar for energy. They need spring flowers, and they need them now.
Why Spring is risky
Here's the problem with spring: it's unreliable.
Those tender green shoots poking through? A late frost can knock them back. Those early blossoms on fruit trees? A few days of hard rain can damage them before the bees get there. Those crocuses blooming in drifts across the lawn? Cold weather, even snow in March, can keep the bees inside, unable to fly out and collect what's on offer.
And if the food doesn't come when the colony needs it - when they're growing, expanding, raising thousands of young bees - the whole hive suffers.
This is why beekeepers across the country are anxiously watching the weather right now. Hoping that good flying days coincide with good flowering days. Worrying about frosts. Checking forecasts obsessively. Keeping a nervous eye on their hives.
What bees need from Spring flowers
A single crocus flower contains very little nectar or pollen. A bee would need to visit them thousands of times them to make a proper contribution to the hive’s food stores.
Thankfully crocuses don't bloom one at a time. They bloom in huge drifts. Carpets of purple, yellow, and white, all opening at once. Which means a bee can work efficiently, moving from flower to flower without wasting energy flying further than they need.
It’s this focus that makes honey bees brilliantly efficient pollinators – not for them the gentle buzzing from one type to another type of flower that other bees do. They find a good source of pollen and they work it as a team – then move on.
This is why planting spring bulbs in clumps helps honey bees so much more than dotting them around individually. A hundred crocuses in a drift is a destination food source. Ten crocuses scattered across a lawn is left for other bees to enjoy.
The bees will find them. And in these critical early Spring weeks, when the colony is most vulnerable, and the weather unpredictable these early flowers make all the difference.
What beekeepers are doing now
Right now, beekeepers are:
Checking stores. Making sure the bees still have enough honey left from last summer to tide them over until the main Spring flow arrives and the weather settles. It's now that the bees need their stores more than ever as activity is high and they need the energy honey gives them to crack on. Emergency measures are taken if starvation is on the cards and they're given icing fondant to bridge the gap.
Watching for signs of activity. Has the colony survived winter? Are the bees flying? Are they bringing pollen back? (You can see it as clumps on their back legs.) If they are it’s a sign that the Queen has probably started laying egg so there are babies to feed and the colony is on the right path. It really does lift your spirits when you see it!
Hoping the weather holds. Not too cold, not too wet, not too windy. Just mild enough, dry enough, calm enough for the bees to get out and for the flowers to bloom.
Worrying. Always worrying. Because that's what beekeeping is, really. Caring about creatures you can't control, in conditions you can't predict, and hoping it all works out!