What problems should we pay attention to when keeping bees in spring?

In spring, everything recovers, bees that have survived the winter gradually become active as the weather gets warmer, and beekeepers are also busy.

The queen bee of the northern bee colony begins to lay eggs from the end of February to the beginning of March in late winter. Under natural conditions, the queen bee can lay dozens to hundreds of eggs all day long. The new bees raised by these overwintering worker bees will gradually replace the old bees that have been wintering, and then cultivate young bees to make the bees grow and meet the needs of the production period. Therefore, the main tasks of spring management are: to supply sufficient feed; Strengthen heat preservation; Control bee mites; Accelerate the development of bee colonies.

In early spring and February, beekeepers should inspect the site and deal with problems in time. Take out dead bees and wax scraps from the nest door every half month.

If the bitten dead bee is found, it means that a mouse has got into the hive and needs to be unpacked immediately. Look, this is the nest and spleen bitten by a mouse. Get them out in time. In early spring, when the temperature rises above 8 degrees, the bees will fly out to defecate when the sun shines on the nest door.

Only when bees excrete accumulated feces can they consume more bee bread, raise the temperature in the center of the hive, secrete royal jelly, feed the queen bee and urge the queen bee to lay eggs. At this time, we can see that the bee farm is full of bee droppings. Normal feces should be thin strips like sorghum grains or lines. At this time, beekeepers should carefully observe the activities of bees. If it is found that the bees flying out of the nest are brightly colored and fly fast, it means that they are good at wintering; The more bees fly out, the stronger the bee colony; If the bee's belly swells, crawls on the front plate of the nest to excrete, or finds a stain of dilute feces, it means that the feed of the bee colony is bad or wet, and the high-quality honey spleen should be replaced; Quickly check the bees with little or no bees flying out, and deal with the problems in time. Bees can consume enough honey powder feed, raise the temperature in the center of the hive, secrete royal jelly, and feed the queen bee after discharging the accumulated feces in the body for two or three times to promote the queen bee to lay eggs.

When the temperature reaches above 8℃, at noon on a warmer and windless sunny day, the beehive should be opened for quick inspection, mainly to find out the three conditions of "strong, medium and weak", and the feed should be recorded according to the three conditions of "excessive, sufficient and lacking". It is also necessary to find out whether there is a queen bee, whether the nest is wet, and whether there are signs such as mildew and diarrhea. Find problems and deal with them at will. If the feed is insufficient, the stored honey spleen can be transferred to the urgently needed bee colony in time, and the honey spleen can be inserted in the position of the lateral spleen or the lateral spleen; Replace moldy spleen and polluted spleen in time to avoid affecting the quality of bees; When unpacking, you can also clean the bottom of the box, clean up the dead bees and residual wax; I found a whole group of dead people sealing the door of the nest tightly, and then moved the hive. After inspection, the honeycomb is still insulated and packaged.

When the temperature rises above 14℃, choose sunny, warm and windless weather to conduct a comprehensive inspection of the bee colony, record the number of bees, spleen, honey spleen and empty spleen, and take out the excess empty spleen. After the bee colony overwinters, it often forms a situation of uneven group strength. If there is a big difference, it must be adjusted to make their group strength similar. The method is: when the bees return to the nest in the afternoon, put a shelf with beehive spleen on the side of the weak bee colony, and be careful not to let the queen bee out. The next day, before the bees leave the nest, put the nest spleen into the partition. Generally, there are not less than 3 beehives in each hive in northern China.

There is a saying that it is "covering spring and freezing autumn" to promote human health to lay eggs early. In fact, so do bees. In early spring, the heat preservation of young bees is more important than that of overwintering. This is because the temperature of bee breeding is 32~35℃, and the temperature is low in early spring, early morning or at night when the cold wave comes, which is easy to freeze the larva eggs, affecting the rejuvenation of bees and reducing economic benefits. So at this time, we should pay more attention to keeping the bees warm. To strengthen heat preservation, first of all, we should concentrate the bees and keep the proportion of bees and spleen. Generally, there are bees on both sides of the nest and spleen in a frame, with 2500 ~ 3000 bees of about 0.25 kg. There are too many beehives and spleen nests, and too much space is not conducive to heat preservation. So when there are fewer bees than spleen, the extra empty spleen should be taken out to the extent that there are more bees than spleen, about 1.5 ~ 3 frames of bee release 1 frame of spleen. At the same time, the bee path will be reduced to about 9 mm, which will increase the density of worker bees and improve the physique of new bees. Secondly, do moisture-proof and heat preservation treatment in the box. Concentrate the spleen in the center of the hive and add partitions on both sides. The outer side of the partition is filled with insulating material. You see, this kind of plastic foam board wrapped in newspaper not only recycles waste, but also plays a good role in heat preservation and moisture prevention. If the group is weak, you can put more layers. Cover the frame beam with a layer of cloth first, and then cover it with cotton pad, newspaper or straw curtain.

Bee mites can spend the winter with bees. When bees breed larvae in spring, bee mites will sneak into the larval room and do reproductive harm. Usually, before bees breed in spring, they should be treated with poison attack and acaricide for 2 ~ 3 times.

Feeding 1000 bees requires 100 grams of pollen. Only honey has no pollen. Bees can't rely on protein in their bodies to continuously secrete royal jelly to feed their larvae. Feeding pollen and sugar cakes before the earliest local pollen plants bloom 15~20 days can stimulate queen bees to lay eggs and bees to breed insects. It is ideal to supplement pollen spleen preserved in autumn in winter and spring. Secondly, the pollen balls collected by bees are collected by the pollen remover for supplementary feeding. The feeding method is to put the dried pollen into a container and soak it in cold boiled water or honey water. The standard of pollen wetting is that there are no hard particles when fingers are squeezed, and the pollen is caught into a ball. The pollen will disperse when squeezed gently, and this humidity is enough. Then put it for 6 ~ 12 hours, and then put it into the empty nest spleen to make powder spleen. When adding powder spleen, it should be based on the relationship between bee spleen. When there are more bees than spleen, the pink side faces inward; If the number of bees is small, the empty nest room faces inward. We can also prepare pollen candy cakes according to the ratio of 3 parts of pollen and concentrated syrup 1 part, and each group can be fed 200-400g at a time. Spread the pollen candy cake on the frame beam, cover it with a piece of wax paper or plastic film, and feed it every 5-7 days until there is a powder source outside. After bee colony adjustment, the honey storage capacity of each bee colony should reach 2 ~ 3 kg, and honey spleen should be added when it is insufficient.

At the same time, reward feeding, as I mentioned earlier, is a feeding method under the condition that the hive is not short of honey, which can stimulate the queen bee to lay eggs and the worker bees actively feed their own bees. The specific method is to mix sugar and water evenly according to the ratio of 1: 1, and the feeding amount is 50 ~ 100 ml per bee frame. The feeder is placed under the cover cloth outside the partition in the nest. When feeding, open a corner of the cover to prevent the temperature loss in the nest. When spleen is scarce, once every other day. Once a day after the spleen is enlarged, until there are a lot of honey sources outside. Pay attention to put floating boards or straw stalks in the feeder to prevent bees from drowning while eating.

Bees collect water, which is mainly used to feed larvae. In spring, there are many spleens in the nest, which requires a lot of water, so water should be fed frequently. Water feeding generally puts water into the feeder, which can hold sugar at night and water during the day. Or use wooden pots and porcelain pots to hold water and put it in the bee farm for bees to get water nearby. Pay attention to putting some wooden sticks and chips on the water to avoid drowning the bees collecting water.

Another method is to put a drinking water tank in front of the nest door and dip a small cloth into the nest door to facilitate bees to get water. Water is added once a day during spawning season.

Expanding the hive is to add empty spleen to the bee colony. Timely expansion of beehives is the key to accelerate the development of early spring bees. Note that to add the unpolluted nest spleen, the newly added nest spleen should be cut off with a knife first; Then spray the nest spleen with 75% diluted alcohol solution. This kind of nest spleen can be used. Whether it is necessary to expand the nest depends on the population of the hive. Therefore, before expanding the hive, we must first check the bee colony, and don't blindly expand the nest: first check whether there is a queen bee, and then observe the spawning and foraging of the queen bee. When the subcircular area of the lateral spleen expands to the bottom of the fossa spleen, accounting for 60 ~ 70% of the spleen area, the spleen should be added. If there are more nests and spleens, there are more bees than spleens, and the new nests and spleens should be placed in the middle. If there is honey or pink spleen in the nest, or there are few offspring, the empty spleen should be added outside and placed in the middle the next day for the queen bee to lay eggs. Add only one nest spleen at a time. In the future, as the new bees leave the house, the outside temperature will gradually increase, and the source of honey powder will gradually increase, so the frequency and speed of adding spleen can be appropriately increased. Empty spleen can be added directly in the middle of the hive. When the nested spleen reaches frame 9, stop adding spleen. Make worker bees gradually dense, reaching the equivalent of bee spleen, or more bees than spleen. The insulation in the box is gradually removed with the expansion of the hive. When the bees are full and the temperature is stable, the packaging outside the box can be removed. When disassembling, disassemble the box first, then the periphery, and finally the bottom of the box.

The climate and honey sources in different parts of China are different, and the time for the bee colony to resume its activities and the time for the queen bee to lay eggs are also different. Therefore, we should arrange the spring management work according to the local specific conditions.