In a message dated 4/1/99 3:13:47 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

> not
 > more than 10% were coming in with any visible pollen and no heavy loads.
  > Two other local bee hobbies saw the same thing.
>  >
>  > What I think has happened is that the maples around here were just about
>  > to burst forth in flower just as the last cold snap hit (20 degress at
>  > night) and this appears to have done in most of the maple pollen.  I have
>  > maple flowers falling all over today and still no great pollen rush for
>  > the bees.
>  >
>  > Can anyone tell me how serious this lost of an important early pollen
>  > sourec will be and what plant/tree should be next in line as a spring
>  > pollen soure?

   It depends.  Certainly the loss of this major pollen source will set back
the bees. But, if they had a good goldenrod season last fall, they may still
have a lot of reserves. You'll have to look inside to evaluate that.

    We commonly have a spring freeze (South Carolina) that kills buds and
open flowers (that's why we love canola, which blooms for half the winter and
seems unaffected by cold).  Each freeze will do damage, but the extent
depends on the colony reserves and actual brood rearing at the time.

    Last spring we had a hard freeze in mid-March, and bees were really hard
to handle afterwards and apparently set back quite a bit. But they were
jammed up with pollen from wild mustard, which had been blooming profusely,
so I think the lack of nectar was a more important loss.

    Pollen supplementation might be a good idea. I gather that the farther
north you get, the more likely it is to help. Some of the Canadian beekeepers
always supplement pollen in the spring, and swear by it.

[log in to unmask]     Dave Green  Hemingway, SC  USA
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