The arrival of spring is an exciting yet challenging time for honey bees and native pollinators. After several months of relative inactivity through the winter bee colonies must quickly ramp up brood rearing and foraging to take advantage of the upcoming bloom. However, the erratic weather and dwindling food reserves of early spring can hinder their success. As responsible stewards of our environment, we can take proactive steps to ensure bees enter the main pollination season healthy, well-fed, and ready to thrive.
Assess Overwintered Bee Colonies
The first priority is evaluating the state of any overwintered honey bee colonies. On a mild 50+ degree day briefly inspect the hive by opening the top and looking down through the frames. How many frames are fully covered with bees? Are there still adequate honey stores remaining or are they running dangerously low? Check for signs of a healthy laying queen like eggs and developing brood. Make notes on any colonies that appear weak or concerning so you can determine which require priority care.
Emergency Feed Undernourished Colonies
If you find that a colony is dangerously low on winter honey stores, they need to be fed right away. If you have any leftover honey frames from stronger hives, you can share them. If you need sugar syrup quickly, you can mix equal parts white sugar and hot water until the sugar is dissolved. Use an upside-down jar or baggie feeder to put the urgent food right on top of the bee cluster. This will give them emergency food until they can start getting more regular spring food. Once a week, check the food level and keep feeding until the blooms provide their own food.
Begin Equalizing and Stimulative Spring Feeding
Once daytime temperatures are maintaining above 50 degrees, it’s time to start spring feeding all colonies with a 1:1 sugar syrup made from white cane or beet sugar. This thinner syrup will stimulate brood production and population growth without being excessively stored. Aim to give each hive 1-2 gallons of stimulative syrup weekly either through hive top feeders, frame feeders, or entrance feeders. Adjust amounts based on colony size and natural forage availability.
We can also use spring feeding to “equalize” hive strength by giving more syrup to weaker colonies and less to strong ones. This helps provide a boost to struggling hives while preventing the strong from swarming too early. As a general guideline, stop stimulative feeding once spring blooms arrive and bees no longer take the syrup.
Provide Fresh Pollen Substitute
Access to pollen is just as vital as nectar for spring build up. We can supplement natural pollen intake with homemade pollen patties placed right on the top bars of the brood nest. Mix 3 parts sugar with 1 part pollen substitute (bee collected pollen or commercial substitute) and enough light syrup to shape into patties. Apply 1 patty over a 2-3 week period, providing a nutritional boost from the beneficial microbes in bee bread.
Assist with Early Season Hive Management
Some regular tasks for taking care of hives can really help bees in early spring. On days when it’s mild, above 50 degrees, open the hives for a short time to:
- Remove any remaining winter insulation like wraps or moisture boxes
- Clean bottom boards of debris
- Do quick inspection for overt disease/pest issues
- Rearrange frames for proper bee space as needed
- Equalize colony strength by moving resources between hives
- Add honey supers and/or extra hive bodies to provide needed space
Provide Fresh Water Sources
Giving spring bees a clean water source close to the hive helps them control their body temperature, process food, and share food with each other. You can give them a bird bath with rocks, a 5 gallon bucket with floating corks, a ground dish with some shade, or a trough with sticks for perching. Change the water every few days to prevent mosquito breeding. Find water that gets some shade, and if you can, add things like twigs, gravel, or moss to make it safer for plants to sit on and for water to drain.
Avoid Early Season Pesticide Use
Pesticide exposure poses heightened risks for young spring bee colonies before populations robustly rebound. It’s best to avoid spraying insecticides, herbicides or fungicides on blooming plants near hives until later season when forager numbers increase. Alert neighbors to hives and request they minimize chemical use if possible until summer.
Provide Early Blooming Pollen and Nectar Sources
Offering a steady stream of flowers for bees to eat is one of the best ways to help them in the spring. Focus on adding native shrubs, trees, and perennials that bloom early and are well-suited to your area, such as
- Spring bulbs – crocus, hyacinth, daffodils
- Flowering trees – redbud, willow, apple
- Berry bushes – blueberry, blackberry, raspberry
- Pollen-rich flowers – dandelions, henbit, deadnettle
- Fragrant herbs – thyme, hyssop, rosemary
Aim for at least 3 blooming species in each early season. Avoid excessive pruning or clearing dormant beds to preserve flowering cover. Consider planting new bee forage if space allows.
Set Out Swarm Traps
For beekeepers struggling with recurrent spring swarming, providing empty bee boxes around the apiary can help naturally “catch” these homeless swarms. Bait traps with a few drops of lemongrass oil and old brood comb. Position traps 15-20 feet high facing south in areas protected from harsh weather. Check frequently and collect captured swarms to rehome.
Join Your Local Beekeeping Association
Connect with other beekeepers nearby! Local clubs provide mentorship, education days, shared equipment and regional insights. Members often assist each other with early season hive evaluations and preparations. Don’t underestimate the value of learning from those with experience in your specific climate and conditions.
Stay Adaptable to Changing Conditions
The key to successfully supporting spring bees is staying observant and flexible as conditions evolve. Closely monitor bloom cycles, weather patterns, hive activity and pest/disease threats throughout your area. Adapt care plans accordingly by modifying feed regiments, hive configurations, forage plantings and other beekeeping practices to match the circumstances bees face each unique spring.
While the unpredictability of early spring weather and forage can certainly challenge bees, we can take many proactive steps to help our pollinators enter the main blooming season healthy, well-fed and primed for success. By providing stopgap feeding, vigilantly monitoring hives, avoiding pesticide use, and planting early forage, bees will be ready to fully capitalize on the coming spring nectar flow!
Feeding Bees in Spring
The early spring inspection should only take a short time, but don’t forget to do this important step.
While youre lifting frames to check for the queen and estimating how large of a cluster you still have, check out your bees food stores.
March and April are notorious for having unpredictable dearths that can starve a hive. Many hives still have to rely on the honey they have stored away. So, unless you left enough honey on your hive, you might find yourself needing to give them a little extra food.
To see if they still have food, just check to see if the food you put in their hive to get ready for winter is still there. You can quickly see if they have food by looking at the tops of their frames to see if there is any honey with a cap on top (see picture).
If you end up determining that your hive does not have enough food, youll need to add some. We suggest using the Mountain Camp Sugar Method for feeding bees in spring.
The Mountain Camp Sugar Method
For late winter/early spring feeding, we recommend The Mountain Camp Sugar Method. This method uses dry sugar as a way to feed your bees. Dry sugar is an excellent bee food for the winter months and early spring because it doesnt freeze up. No matter how cold it gets the bees will be able to chip away at these tiny granules and feed on them.
Another benefit of using dry sugar is that it is able to pull moisture out of the air and soak it up like a sponge. Moisture can be an absolute monster when it comes to whether or not your bees survive winter.
Moisture has a tendency to gather under your inner cover and turn into freezing cold water. Once this water has gathered, it drips down on to the cluster below. Much like humans can suffer hypothermia from getting wet in the cold, the bees cant handle being wet in the winters cold and unforgiving environment either.
Heres a Pro Tip!
Heres a quick step by step informative video from Kamon Reynolds – Tennessees Bees on how he does the Mountain Camp Sugar Method.
- First he cracks open the hive and inner cover
- People spray a little sugar water on the newspaper to keep it heavy and help the bees chew through it. Then they put some newspaper right on top of the frames.
- After that, he slowly pours a huge pile of dry sugar on top of the paper.
- Evenly spreads the sugar on top of the newspaper.
- He then gives it a light spray of water and shuts the hive.
Perform a Varroa Mite Treatment
Its likely the last time you did a Varroa Mite treatment was back in January. In that mid winter mite treatment you werent able to open the hive, so you were limited to doing a blind (no count) treatment using the Oxalic Acid Vaporization (OAV) method. Although the OAV method is phenomenal for January when there is no brood in the cells and you cant open the hive, spring time offers quite a few more treatment options. To learn more about the OAV treatment method and how to do it you can check out our article called: Winter Beekeeping: Treating Varroa Mites & Feeding Bees In Winter (Click Here).
Although OAV is great for January, when it comes to the early to mid spring treatment wed recommend using Apivar. Feel free to do your own research on what would work best for you though.
Why, When & How to Use Apivar
Apivar is an extremely versatile and effective treatment against Varroa Mites. Listed below are some of the many benefits.
- Apivar is great for early spring because it doesn’t care about temperature. It doesn’t matter if it’s too hot or too cold. The only catch is that the treatment will only work if the strips are touched by the bees first. If your bees are always grouped together in the winter, this is why it’s not so great.
- There are times when Mite Away Quick Strips (MAQS) can stop your queen from raising her young and even kill her. Apivar, on the other hand, won’t affect her raising her young at all. This is very important for the spring build up.
- Since you just used OAV a few months ago, switching between medicines can keep Varroa Mites from becoming immune to them.
- Overall, the 42 days of Apivar work much better than the harsh 7 days of a MAQS treatment.
- Apivar is safe for bees, their young, and people to use.
- Apivar is easy to use, but MAQS can be dangerous if not used correctly.
Heres a Pro Tip!
The Honey Bee Health Coalition strives to bring beekeepers, growers, researchers, government agencies, and many other groups into a unified conversation on improving the health of honey bees.
In this video, they cover how and when to use Apivar to help control the Varroa Mite population.
Feeding Bees for Spring Build up – When we start!
FAQ
How to feed bees in the early spring?
We recommend sugar water mixed 1:1 in the spring and summer and 2:1 (2 parts sugar to 1 part water) in the fall. We discovered last year it is best to add 1 teaspoon of protein powder to your sugar water. This helps gives the bees the protein they need. The board holds in the heat during the spring.
What is the 3 feet 3 mile rule for bees?
The “3 feet, 3 miles” rule in beekeeping refers to a guideline for moving beehives. It suggests that if you move a hive less than 3 feet, the bees will likely still find their way back to the original location, and if you move it 3 miles or more, the bees will reorient to the new location.
What to do with bees in the spring?
Examining, cleaning, and storing hives that didn’t make it through the winter (called “dead out hives”), Undoing hive winterization on surviving hives, Turning hive boxes upside down so brood is on the bottom, Replacing old, dark comb frames with new frames and foundation, and putting in new bees, if any
What is the 7 10 rule in beekeeping?
If you are a beekeeper, the “7/10 rule” tells you when to add a new honey super to your hive. It suggests adding a new super when the bees have occupied 7 out of 10 frames in the current box with brood, honey, or pollen.