Spring is definitely coining! God promised in Genesis 1:14, “Then God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and they shall serve as signs and for seasons, and for days and years'' Spring isn’t here just yet, but don't tell that to the bees.
Hie bees are reving up their activity in response to pollen, nectar, and warmer temperatures in the environment. Iliis means that they will soon be thinking of producing drones, the male bees, and of reproduction of the entire colony, swarming. 1 lowever, the beekeepers, that's us, have a slightly different path in mind. We'd like to make new honeybee colonies by splitting up the existing colonies, before they swarm, so that they don’t swarm. then, we try to induce the bees to make new queens in a controlled way.
Ihe first step to producing new queen bees is to have healthy colonies. We inspected our colonies a few days ago and graded them on an A, B, C scale: ‘A' means ivc wish all our colonies were like you, and 'C' means we need to change your queen out quickly! Our nine colonies have three each of A, B, and V, grade. Amongst the three “A' colonies, we needed to pick which one we will use as our queen mother.
