Beekeeping Calendar by Region: What to Do in the Hive Each Month
One month of your region's university calendar
Sources checked on ; next check .
Choose a region to see what its calendar lists for a month.
Choose a region and a month to see what that region's calendar lists, under the calendar's own period labels. In May, central North Carolina's calendar says the nectar flow continues, so keep adding supers. Nine regions have a sourced calendar.
Reference tables
| Region | Source | Organized | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Northeast | Beekeeping Calendar for the Northeast (Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Pollinator Network) | Month by month | Undated |
| Pennsylvania | Honey Bee Management Throughout the Seasons (Penn State Extension) | By season | Updated December 18, 2023 |
| Central North Carolina | Calendar for Beekeeping in Central North Carolina (Nancy Ruppert, NCDA&CS, published by NC State Extension) | Month by month | Updated December 2019 |
| Florida | Florida Beekeeping Management Calendar (UF/IFAS Extension (IN848)) | Month by month, October–December grouped, for north, central and south Florida | Revised September 2021; reviewed November 2024 |
| Mississippi | Mississippi Beekeeping Calendar (Mississippi State University Extension Service) | Four seasonal blocks | Publication 4053 (POD-10-24) |
| Arkansas | Arkansas Beekeeping Calendar (University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension Service) | Month by month | Undated |
| Missouri | Seasonal Apiary Management for Missouri (University of Missouri Extension (G7601)) | Month ranges, first and second year | Revised March 2016; September 2017 |
| Utah | Beekeeping Annual Calendar (Utah State University Extension) | Month by month (two Utah State calendars) | Undated |
| California | Backyard Beekeeping Timeline for California (E.L. Niño Bee Lab, California Master Beekeeper Program, UC Davis) | Month ranges, first-year and established beekeepers | Undated |
Each region here has its own calendar, published by a university extension service or another university program; Utah State publishes two, and the tool keeps those apart rather than blending them. Pick a region and a month, and the tool prints that calendar's entries for the month under the labels the calendar itself uses: a month name, a range of months, a group of months in a table, or a season. Nothing is averaged across regions and nothing is turned into a rule for the country. Each calendar is also reproduced in full, in its own order, on the region pages.
Worked example: May in central North Carolina
An example, not advice for a particular hive. Choose Central North Carolina and May, or open May in central North Carolina directly, and the first line is the calendar's own: "Nectar flow continues---keep adding supers; get extraction/bottling equipment ready."
Five more lines follow it, in the source's order. Swarm work carries on from April. Failing queens are replaced. Warm-season planting for nectar and pollen continues. Beetle traps go in if they are needed, and water is put out in the apiary if there is none there already. Not one of May's six lines is a treatment, so this month reads straight through. Change the month to December and one line is replaced by a pointer to the source, because the calendar names a product in that line and this tool never reprints one. The whole central North Carolina calendar shows all twelve months at once.
How the calendars are organized
The sources are not laid out the same way, and the tool does not force them into one shape. Cornell's Northeast calendar and NC State's for central North Carolina give each of the twelve months a single list. The University of Arkansas's is month by month as well, with every month split into its Bees section and its Beekeepers section. Utah State's is two documents at once: a Beekeeping Annual Calendar on the web, whose first block covers January and February together, and an Annual Activity Calendar for Northern Utah as a PDF, which gives each of the twelve months a section of its own. Florida's is three tables, one each for north, central and south Florida, month by month, with October through December grouped in all three. Missouri's G7601 runs in ranges of months and gives two sets of them, a first year establishing hives and a second year managing for honey production; UC Davis's California timeline mixes single months with ranges and has two tracks as well, a first-year beekeeper's covering all twelve months and a previous-hives one that the source stops at July. Mississippi State's is four blocks — December through March, April through June, July and August, September through November — and only the first two carry the publication's own headings: December through March splits between established colonies and preparing for new colonies, April through June between established colonies and new colonies, and the summer and fall blocks run undivided. Penn State's is an article written by season.
That last one is why the tool has a second kind of answer. Penn State's seasons are tied to months only where the article ties them itself, as it does for the first of them: "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." Ask for a month the article never dates, and the tool says so and lists the seven seasons instead. Supplying the months an article withholds would be this site talking over its source.
Regions without a calendar yet
The picker also holds the Pacific Northwest, Texas, the Upper Midwest and Colorado. No extension calendar for those has been found and read for this site yet, and choosing one shows no entries at all. It names the nearest region that does have a calendar, links it, and says that the calendar was not written for the region you picked.
That last line matters more than it looks. NC State's calendar fences itself off in the same way: it names the part of North Carolina it was written for, and says its recommendations assume average climate and weather. Carrying it over a state line on your behalf would be this tool putting words in a source's mouth.
Mites and treatments
Two kinds of line are handled differently from the rest of a month.
Where a calendar names a treatment product or a dose, the tool prints a pointer to the source in place of the line. No calendar entry here names a treatment product, and the source line at the top of each month links the calendar itself.
Where a line is about mites, the tool adds a link to the varroa calculator. That is where the arithmetic and the action levels live — from the Honey Bee Health Coalition, 9th edition — and they are not copied out into these calendar entries. The counts and thresholds the calendars print for themselves are kept out of the entries too, so that no figure written for one region turns up under another region's month. Missouri's is the exception: its monitoring line keeps the threshold inside the sentence it was written in, and the tool marks that line as an older threshold where it prints it.
None of this is a diagnosis, and a calendar entry is not a reading of your colony. Where something in the hive looks wrong, your state apiary inspector is the person to ask.
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Sources (11)
- Cornell University Pollinator Network, Beekeeping Calendar for the Northeast cals.cornell.edu
- Penn State Extension, Honey Bee Management Throughout the Seasons extension.psu.edu
- Nancy Ruppert (NCDA&CS), Calendar for Beekeeping in Central North Carolina, updated December 2019 (PDF) growingsmallfarms.ces.ncsu.edu
- UF/IFAS Extension, Florida Beekeeping Management Calendar (IN848) edis.ifas.ufl.edu
- Mississippi State University Extension, Mississippi Beekeeping Calendar extension.msstate.edu
- University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, Arkansas Beekeeping Calendar uaex.uada.edu
- University of Missouri Extension, Seasonal Apiary Management for Missouri (G7601) extension.missouri.edu
- Utah State University Extension, Beekeeping Annual Calendar extension.usu.edu
- Utah State University Extension, Beekeepers Annual Activity Calendar for Northern Utah (PDF) extension.usu.edu
- E.L. Niño Bee Lab, UC Davis, Backyard Beekeeping Timeline for California (PDF) cambp.ucdavis.edu
- Honey Bee Health Coalition, Tools for Varroa Management, 9th edition (June 11, 2026) honeybeehealthcoalition.org