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Cherry blossoms

The cherry blossoms are starting to emerge, which means it is just about the right time to expand
the hives. There are basically two things we can do. The first option, we can add a second brood chamber to the hive. To do this, we place an empty hive body on top of the hive, and fill it with empty drawn out frames, preferably frames that we used in our honey super the season before. The second option, we can place the queen excluder on the hive and then place a honey super on top of it.

These are the normal steps that a beekeeper can take at this time of the season. I, however, have a special case, in that I do not have any empty drawn out frames from the previous season, as I only had nucs to work with.

I can still choose one of those options, the only difference is that I will be working with wax foundations. I think I will go with option two and go ahead and give each colony a honey super to work with. This isn't a big problem, as I can snatch up a drawn out foundation from last year, that served as a food frame, and place it in the middle of the hive body. The bees like to bring nectar up to drawn out combs and once they figure out that there is plenty of space to build up there in the honey super, they will start moving up and begin drawing out comb.

Giving the bees wax foundations at this time of the year is helpful in preventing them from swarming. They get plenty of room and stay busy working on the new frames, so their desire to swarm out to some place bigger is suppressed.

Cherry blossoms used to be just something pretty to look for me, now they mean something more!

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