Spring comes not all at once, but in waves — tentative at first, then insistent. The snow recedes. The crocus pushes through frozen ground. The sun, climbing higher each day, warms the southern face of your hive. And inside, in the darkness, something ancient awakens.
The cluster, that tight sphere of shivering bodies that has sustained itself through months of bitter cold, begins to loosen. Bees on the outer edges break away, stretch their wings, perform cleansing flights on the first warm afternoons. The queen, dormant through winter with her egg-laying reduced to nearly nothing, stirs at the center. Her attendants feed her more frequently. Her ovaries, shrunken and quiet, begin to swell.
Within days, she is laying again. Ten eggs. Twenty. Fifty. By late March or early April, depending on your latitude, she may be laying a thousand eggs per day. The brood nest expands outward in concentric rings — eggs at the center, larvae surrounding them, capped pupae at the edges. The colony's population, depleted by winter losses, begins its exponential climb toward summer strength.
This is the great awakening. And it is the most dangerous time of the year.
Here is the cruel mathematics of spring: the queen is ramping up production at precisely the moment when food stores are at their lowest. The colony has been consuming honey all winter, moving slowly upward through the hive, eating their way toward survival. By March, they may have consumed forty, fifty, even sixty pounds of honey.
And now, just when they need energy most — to warm the expanding brood nest, to fly out on reconnaissance missions, to begin the work of drawing comb and collecting pollen — the cupboard is nearly bare.
Meanwhile, the spring nectar flow has not yet begun. Yes, there are early bloomers — crocus, pussy willow, dandelions — but these are scattered, inconsistent. A week of cold rain can delay everything. A late frost can kill the blossoms. The colony is burning calories faster than it can replace them.
This is called the starvation gap, and it kills more colonies than winter ever did.
Wait until you have a string of warm days — at least 55°F (13°C), preferably warmer. The bees need to be mobile, not huddled in a defensive cluster. Choose midday, when the sun is high and foragers are out.
What you're looking for:
If stores are low — and in many cases they will be — you must feed. Do not wait. Do not assume the bees will "figure it out." A colony can starve to death in a week if temperatures drop and they cannot fly.
Use a 1:1 sugar syrup (equal parts sugar and water by weight). This mimics the consistency of fresh nectar and stimulates the queen to lay. Feed until natural forage is abundant, or until the bees ignore the feeder — their signal that they no longer need your help.
Consider adding a pollen patty as well, especially if you see no pollen coming in on the legs of returning foragers. Pollen is protein, and protein is essential for raising brood. No pollen = no babies.
If the colony survives the starvation gap — and with your help, it will — then something remarkable happens. The population explodes.
Remember: a worker bee takes 21 days from egg to emergence. The eggs the queen laid in early March emerge in late March. Those bees, after 12 days of nursing duties, become foragers in mid-April, just as the dandelions and fruit trees begin to bloom. They bring back nectar and pollen in quantities the hive hasn't seen in six months.
This influx of food allows the queen to lay even more. By May, she may be hitting her peak: 1,500 to 2,000 eggs per day. The brood nest expands to fill entire frames, then entire boxes. The colony, which numbered perhaps 10,000 bees in February, now approaches 40,000. By June, it may hit 60,000.
And with that population explosion comes a new risk: swarming.
We will cover swarms in detail in the next section, but understand this now: spring is swarm season. A strong, healthy colony with a young queen and ample resources will want to reproduce. That is its biological imperative.
Watch for queen cups along the bottom edges of frames — small, acorn-shaped structures that signal the workers are considering raising a new queen. If those cups contain eggs or larvae, a swarm is imminent. The workers are preparing to split the colony: half will leave with the old queen to establish a new home, half will stay with a virgin queen to carry on the legacy.
You can prevent this (we'll teach you how). But you cannot eliminate the urge. Spring is when bees think about the future — and sometimes, the future means leaving.
"In spring, the beekeeper walks a tightrope: feed too little and the colony starves; provide too little space and they swarm. Success lies in vigilance, not intervention."
— The Practical Beekeeper's Calendar, 1897
Early Spring (March-April):
Late Spring (May-June):