Honey Bee Management Throughout the Seasons (Pennsylvania)
Updated
At a glance
- Pennsylvania, Summer: not tied to a month
- Pennsylvania, Fall: not tied to a month
- Pennsylvania, Winter: not tied to a month
Filled: at or over its phase's thresholdOutlined: under itGrey: phase not recorded
| July: the Pennsylvania calendar asks for a mite check. “Because winter bees are essential to successful overwintering, Varroa mite infestations must be assessed and treated at this time. Integrated Pest Management approaches (IPM) are recommended to manage mite populations.” |
| August: the Pennsylvania calendar asks for a mite check. “Because winter bees are essential to successful overwintering, Varroa mite infestations must be assessed and treated at this time. Integrated Pest Management approaches (IPM) are recommended to manage mite populations.” |
| September: the Pennsylvania calendar asks for a mite check. “Because winter bees are essential to successful overwintering, Varroa mite infestations must be assessed and treated at this time. Integrated Pest Management approaches (IPM) are recommended to manage mite populations.” |
Penn State's article is written by season, not by month: late winter, early spring, late spring and early summer, summer, late summer, fall, winter. It is laid out below in that order, and no season here is given a month the article itself doesn't give it.
- Publisher
- Penn State Extension
- Date
- Updated December 18, 2023
- Organized
- By season
- Mite checks
- July, August and September Mite checks section
On this page
Penn State Extension's article is not a list of months. It walks through the colony's year as seven named seasons, and its argument is that management follows the colony rather than the calendar: "Modern beekeeping practices are adjusted to match the seasonal colony lifecycle by increasing honey production, limiting seasonal behavior (swarming), or managing parasites that also follow seasonal patterns."
That difference is worth keeping rather than smoothing over. Turning "late spring" into a pair of month names would be this site's invention, not Penn State's, so the seasons below stay as seasons. Two of them are dated by the article itself, in passing, and only those two are treated as dated anywhere here. Everything else is sequence.
The calendar, season by season
Late Winter
- In late winter and early spring (mid-February in the northeastern United States) honey bee queens resume egg-laying and the colony initiates brood rearing. Nurse bees will use stored honey and pollen resources to feed themselves and the developing brood.
Early Spring
- Early spring can be a perilous time of year for the honey bee colony. The nutritional requirements of brood are energetically costly, and weather conditions can be volatile.
- Beekeepers, especially those in cooler climates, must monitor their colonies regularly at this time of year to make sure they have adequate resources to feed their young and keep the colony warm.
- When colonies have limited resources, supplemental sugar syrup and pollen substitute can be fed to sustain the bees until nectar flows are stable.
- As freezing temperatures become less frequent, more flowers bloom, and honey bees begin foraging more intensively.
- Establishing new colonies is most often done in the spring. Many beekeepers purchase packages, which are screened boxes filled with approximately 10,000 workers and a queen.
- Nucs consist of four or five standard frames of comb complete with bees, brood, pollen, honey, and a queen. They do not need to be fed as aggressively as packaged bees, because they have stores of pollen and honey and do not need to produce as much wax to create comb.
- Another way a beekeeper can obtain a new colony is by catching a swarm locally.
Late Spring–Early Summer
- By late spring, floral resources have been available for several weeks and remain plentiful. The colony has been actively rearing new bees during this time.
- The increased population in the colony triggers the rearing of new queens and drones (males).
- Swarming is problematic for beekeepers because the colony size is reduced dramatically (by one-half or more).
- Beekeepers must check their colonies regularly to make sure the brood chamber and honey supers are not full, and that queen rearing has not been initiated.
- The most effective method to manage swarming after the colony initiates queen rearing is to make a split. Splitting is the act of separating a colony into two: One half contains the queen and the other is left with one or more queen cells.
- Beekeepers can take advantage of abundant floral resources and the colony's drive to reproduce during late spring by artificially rearing queens.
Summer
- During the summer, the colony collects and stores the honey that the bees will consume in the fall and winter months.
- (mite check) Summer is also a key time to start monitoring for Varroa mites. Varroa mites and their management remain the greatest challenge in modern beekeeping.
Check a mite count with the varroa calculator.
Late Summer
- In Pennsylvania, summer nectar flows diminish in July, resulting in a nectar dearth or scarcity. Honey bees become more defensive of their colony's resources during this time, and strong colonies may begin robbing smaller or weaker colonies.
- Late in the summer, August and September in the northeastern United States, colonies also begin to rear winter bees, who are physiologically distinct from summer bees.
- (mite check) Because winter bees are essential to successful overwintering, Varroa mite infestations must be assessed and treated at this time. Integrated Pest Management approaches (IPM) are recommended to manage mite populations.
Check a mite count with the varroa calculator.
Fall
- At the beginning of fall in many regions of the northeast, there is another nectar flow that beekeepers call the fall flow.
- (mite check) Monitoring for Varroa mites is necessary at this time, both to ensure that late summer treatments were effective and to determine if the mite population has risen above the threshold since the summer.
- Honey bee colonies will soon be completely reliant on their honey stores. As floral resources become scarce, worker bees become increasingly defensive.
- Beekeepers pay special attention to the weight of their colonies in the fall. Colonies with large population sizes and honey stores have the best chance of surviving winter.
Check a mite count with the varroa calculator.
Winter
- Winter for honey bees begins as the last flowers are eliminated by freezing temperatures. The summer bees have died off and brood-rearing comes to an end for the season. Cold temperatures trigger the colony to form a cluster.
- Because honey bees are unable to consume cold supplemental syrup, northeast beekeepers may provide winter feed as fondant or hard sugar, which is placed on top of the uppermost frames inside the hive.
- (mite check) This calendar names a treatment option here; see the source.
Check a mite count with the varroa calculator.
Where the article names a month, and where it doesn't
The late winter section opens with a parenthesis that dates itself: brood rearing resumes "in late winter and early spring (mid-February in the northeastern United States)". The late summer section dates itself twice, once through the dearth and once through the winter bees. Those are the two anchors.
Elsewhere, month names appear but belong to something other than the season. The early spring section mentions "the nectar flows that occur in May and June in Pennsylvania" — that sentence dates the flows, and it is about installing packages in time for them, so it is not a statement that early spring is May and June. This page reads it the narrow way.
Winter bees, made in late summer
The reason late summer gets its own section is that the colony starts building a different kind of worker: "Late in the summer, August and September in the northeastern United States, colonies also begin to rear winter bees, who are physiologically distinct from summer bees." The article then explains the stake — those bees are the ones that have to last until spring — and draws the management conclusion in the next line, that mite infestations "must be assessed and treated at this time."
The same section describes what the forage is doing: "In Pennsylvania, summer nectar flows diminish in July, resulting in a nectar dearth or scarcity." Defensiveness and robbing follow from that scarcity, and the article's answer is fewer inspections and a robbing screen on the entrance. Fall, in its turn, brings "another nectar flow that beekeepers call the fall flow", which in some areas allows a second harvest.
Mite checks
Mites come up in four of the seven seasons. Summer is where monitoring begins: "Summer is also a key time to start monitoring for Varroa mites. Varroa mites and their management remain the greatest challenge in modern beekeeping." Late summer is where assessment and treatment are tied to the winter bees. Fall asks for monitoring "both to ensure that late summer treatments were effective and to determine if the mite population has risen above the threshold since the summer". Winter is described as an opportunity rather than a chore, because a broodless colony leaves the mites exposed; that paragraph names a specific product throughout, so the calendar above points at the source for it rather than repeating it.
The threshold the fall section refers to is not printed above and is not printed here. The varroa calculator holds the Honey Bee Health Coalition's current figures and works a sample out against them.
Mite-check reminders for the Pennsylvania calendar
One short email in each month the Pennsylvania calendar asks for a mite check. Nothing else.