Spring Guide for Experienced Beekeepers

How did your colony weather the cold?

As the temperature warms and daylight hours lengthen, the queen will increase her egg laying to expand her colony in readiness for the abundance of forage on offer.

As soon as the temperature is warm enough, it’s time to inspect your hive to discover how your bees fared over the colder months.
Your checklist for spring:

Brood Inspections

Colony expansion

Apiary maintenance

Swarm prevention

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Your first inspection in spring

Inspecting your hive after a cold winter is one of the most exciting activities for a beekeeper (after honey harvesting of course!) and will help you to discover whether your pre-winter preparations paid off.

Make sure you choose a nice warm day to make it easier for your bees to maintain their optimal brood temperature.

When inspecting, be on the lookout for good population numbers, a queen, healthy brood patterns and honey stores, and most importantly, look closely for pests and diseases and treat accordingly.

If you need support with your first spring inspection, we’re here to help! We have a swarm of resources available and a knowledgeable team on hand to offer support.

Bee organised, save time

Top tip: Ensure your first inspection is a breeze, with our newly released Flow Beekeeping Caddy and Accessories Set.

The caddy helps you store, organise and transport your beekeeping essentials with ease and comes with a range of handy accessories.

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Boost your beekeeping with multiple hives

In spring, your colony will likely reproduce by making preparations to swarm.

You’ll need to make plans on how you will accommodate this new apiary edition, by either adding a new hive to your apiary or gifting to a friend.

Apart from being able to harvest and share more honey, owning two hives ramps up your learning and understanding of the fascinating nature of bees.

Each colony is its own unique microcosm and community, with two you can compare colony strength, productivity, health and support ailing hives with queen cell transfers or brood if needed.

If you’re short on space, setting up a hive for a friend is an excellent opportunity to inspect and learn without the additional ownership.

Expand your apiary this season

Our Flow Hive bundle has everything you need this spring.

The bundle comes complete with our most popular Flow Hive, a bee suit in organic cotton, stainless steel smoker, goatskin gloves, J-hive tool, Flow Veil and a sweet saving!

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Get ready for your growing colony

If you’re an experienced beekeeper, you’ll know it’s time to assemble your brood frames and get your spare brood boxes built.

With warmer weather, your queen will amp up her egg-laying which means your colony will expand. You don’t want to get caught out by a colony that’s ready to reproduce with nowhere to house them!

Top Tip: Many experienced beekeeper’s keep a swarm capture kit on hand (sometimes even in their car!) throughout beekeeping season, consisting of a brood box, brood frames, base, roof and a suit.

Apiary maintenance

As things start to ramp up in the apiary, it’s a great time to check your equipment – there’s nothing worse than discovering a hole in your bee suit hood when you’re up close and personal with an open hive!

Inspect your safety equipment and make sure you have everything you’ll need coming into the new season.

Re-oil cedar hives or check to see if your Araucaria paint jobs need a new coat.

Top Tip: When re-treating timber components, use no VOC non-toxic treatments – these can be reapplied while the bees are in the hive. Make sure you wear protective clothing.

Swarm prevention

Swarming is the natural way bees reproduce and multiply, however, it’s considered good beekeeping practice to take steps to avoid. Feral colonies can pose a risk to the public, your bees, other beekeepers, and honey bee biosecurity in your country.

If your bees swarm, your colony will be reduced as will their nectar resources and your hive may be left vulnerable to pests and diseases.

Like most beekeeping practices, swarm mitigation is about understanding bee behaviour and attempting to meet their needs before they act.

Will you split your hive?

If you have a large, healthy hive it is possible to create a new colony from it by making a split.

The concept is that you take a portion of an established colony and transfer it to a separate hive thereby creating two colonies. (Extra: Learn about vertical splits).

They'll each have sufficient worker bee populations, stores and either their own queen or possibility of creating one from existing fertilised eggs.

Splitting your hive is the most successful way to mitigate swarms and is considered a responsible beekeeping practice.

Monitoring your splits

It’s a good idea to monitor your splits closely in the days following their creation. Make sure each has enough adult bees to care for the brood you have given them and take action if they do not.

Extra: Has the new queen hatched in the split hive?

The thrill of a swarm catch

When a colony has made the decision to swarm, sometimes it’s unavoidable.

Luckily, catching a swarm of bees is one of the most joyous parts of beekeeping and it is an easy and free way to bolster your apiary!

At this stage, they seldom have comb and are just a cluster of bees. Without the complication of comb, a beekeeper can easily scoop, shake or lower the swarm into their equipment and bring them back to their apiary.

Watch Cedar catch a swarm at Flow HQ live on camera!

Need extra help?

There’s always more to learn to grow and deepen your knowledge in beekeeping.

So in conjunction with the world's experts we've created TheBeekeeper.org

It lets you fast-track your learning easily and enjoyably. Learn in your own time with high-quality videos explaining what you need to know in order to feel confident looking after your bees.

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