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The long-awaited black locust flow is finally underway!

With the black locust trees in bloom and with the weather supposed to be hot, I anticipate a lot of swarms. Check your hives, if you see the queen AND queen cells, take your queen and a few brood frames and move her to a new hive along with 1-2 frames of nectar/honey and pollen. Your original hive will raise a new queen and you should see eggs and larvae in about 4 weeks. Queen cells are very fragile and should be handled with extreme care.

We are so excited and honored to tell you we've sold out of our first round of queens for May! We are grafting every week from here on out. This spring the weather has been bumpy and chilly. This erratic and cool weather has set back our success rates of queen cells through to mated queens.  We still have plenty of June queens available for pre-order *and if you want one sooner than June... place a pre-order for June and in the comments let us know you'd like to pick up as soon as possible -this will help us build our waitlist (worst case, you still get one in June). As we have queens ready and laying, we will go down the line of prepaid orders and notify them first.

Thank you for buying local queens! Together we're building a better honey bee suited for the Chesapeake region. Happy beekeeping and don’t hesitate with questions. 

Peace, love, and honey bees

-

Bryan and Karly Fae

Chesapeake Queen Company 

What should you be doing now?

1. Supering hives for the nectar flow. Plan ahead, order ASAP if you need it. If you have it already, make sure it's assembled, painted, and ready to go.
2. Replace any damaged hive boxes. Any boxes with gaps or cracks will lead to robbing once the nectar dearth starts at the end of June. So we need to be proactive now because once robbing starts, it’s not easy to stop.
3. Make sure the bees have plenty of room in their hives and checkerboard (alternating drawn and undrawn) in any unused or undrawn frames into the middle of the hive.
4. Keep an eye out for swarming preparations in your hives 
5. Consider requeening an older queen < or put her in a "retirement" nuc if you can't bring yourself to pinch her
6. Mite checks < got varroa? Use the Honey Bee Health Coalition varroa management tool
7. Consider marking any queens that haven’t been marked yet. This just helps let you know if a hive swarmed 
8. Think about your honey jars and labels and or extraction equipment, order it now if you need it

What are we up to: 

1. Grafting queens, getting mating nucs and cell builders ready
2. Swarm calls 
3. Teaching in the Central Maryland Beekeepers Association teaching apiary (aka "Nuc Yard") - meets will be live-streamed on Facebook or contact Bryan about attending 
4. Zoom attending bee clubs
5. Having fun messing around with videos, check out our Instagram! One of our videos/ "reels" hit over 20k in views - Wow, pretty crazy!
6. Working on new t-shirts and sticker designs < be on the lookout for a preorder in the next month or so
7. Always adding more content to our website, like an archive for the newsletters.  Let us know if you have any feedback or find a broken link. 
8. Working hard sun up to after sundown! 

Fit more forage in your backyard 

Let's talk cover crops, they aren't for just farmers. Nature hates a vacuum and will fill it, so beat her to the punch, and fill it with something that can feed your bees and improve your soil! The picture above is the Red Russian kale (overwintered and) let it go to seed, and underplanted with crimson clover. The honey bees love working this patch of kale every year - and we haven't had to buy any kale seeds in a few years. More cover crop info from Penn State. Don't be afraid of trying a cover crop in a bare patch or between veggies. There are many out there but here a few to get you started:

• Buckwheat (ANNUAL)
• Canola /Rapeseed/Mustards (ANNUAL)
• Crimson Clover (ANNUAL) 
• Red Clover (ANNUAL)
• Dutch White Clover  (PERENNIAL) 
• Sweet Alyssum (ANNUAL)
• Violets(PERENNIAL)

While the culinary-minded will tell you to not let some of your garden plants "go to seed". Many of these plants, like herbs and greens, will create a profusion of small flowers that can be a boon to pollinators. So get seedy, and improve forage even in small spaces. Here a few to get you started:

• Greens - kales, collards, mustards, and lettuces 
• Herbs- basil, thyme, sage, oregano, rosemary, chives, cilantro, mints, etc - honestly I can't think of a single one that doesn't produce a ton of tiny flowers!

Lastly, try going vertical. Got a small space and want some easy summer-fall forage? Try sunflowers! Always fun, cheery, and easy. Check out a "multi-branching" variety for an even longer bloom time.  You could even do a cover crop between and around the sunflowers since they will tower over it. 

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