Spring buildup

What is happening in the box

The queen starts laying again well before there is anything to forage, using stores to do it. The population climbs from a winter cluster to a full colony over a few weeks, and Penn State puts the swarm peak that follows at mid-April to mid-June in the mid-Atlantic.

Your own window moves with your spring. It opens when the colony starts building and closes when the main flow ends, which in a colder or later climate is weeks away from the mid-Atlantic dates.

The colony is spending stores fastest at exactly the point they are lowest, which is why late winter starvation is more common than mid-winter starvation.

The first inspection

Wait for a genuinely warm, still day. What you are answering: is there a laying queen, are there stores, and is there disease. That is it, and it should take ten minutes.

Eggs answer the first question without finding the queen. Hefting answers the second without opening anything at all.

Feeding

A light colony in early spring needs feeding and it is a different job from fall feeding. Thin syrup at 1:1 stimulates laying, which is what you want in spring and emphatically not what you want in fall.

Stop once natural forage arrives, or you will have syrup stored in supers you intend to sell.

Reversing and giving space

Colonies tend to move upward through winter, ending in the top box with an empty one below. Reversing puts the empty box above the cluster so the queen has room to expand into.

The trap

Enthusiasm. A warm week in March is not spring, and a colony given three boxes it cannot cover will chill brood on the next cold snap. Expand in step with the population rather than in step with the weather or with your own impatience.

References