72. Spring management of bees is the work on the part of the beekeeper designed to assist each colony of bees to build up rapidly with a minimum expenditure of energy. The time when each colony should reach this maximum strength will depend entirely upon the opening of bloom of the first important surplus honey plants in your locality. To secure the maximum results from bees it is necessary to have the colony reach its peak of strength in field bees just at the beginning of bloom of the first important surplus honey plants. All your efforts of spring management must be timed toward this ideal result. If the colony reaches its maximum too long before the principal surplus honey plants come into bloom in your locality, your problem of swarm control will be greatly increased. If the colony reaches its peak of strength too long after the beginning of bloom of these honey plants, you will lose a valuable portion of the honey flow because the maximum number of bees should be there to work on it from the very beginning of the bloom.

73. If you have carried out the work explained in the preceding chapters the labor of spring management will practically have been eliminated. The necessity of having to do much work with bees in the spring, indicates poor management previously. You will recall the point we made in chapter 1 that the proper time to do your spring work with the bees was in the fall. This is because the necessities for rapid building up of a colony in spring can best be supplied the previous fall. To supply them in spring is to attempt to make the best of a bad job and to attempt to requeen a colony in spring is undesirable in most localities because it disturbs continuous egg laying by a queen in that colony and therefore slows up the building up of the colony. New worker bees emerge 21 days from the time eggs are laid.

74. If you neglect bees in the fall it means that you can only partially make up for this neglect by spring management, even though your spring conditions are quite ideal and you are quite expert at your work. Weather conditions in spring are too frequently unfavorable to requeen or feed. Just as a young, vigorous queen was necessary early in fall, so she is far more necessary in spring and to hinder the colony least, should have been given to that colony the previous fall. Adequate stores for conversion of food into baby bees should be in the hive from the previous fall and colonies should not be caught short of stores in spring and under the necessity of being fed during the cold windy days of the early season. Thus you will see that our statement in paragraph 13 that the time to do your spring feeding was in fall, is correct. If the bees were given no protection in the fall and the beekeeper has a change of heart in spring and consequently attempted to give protection then you can readily see that he is "locking the door after the horse is stolen."

It should be plain, then, that attempts to remedy improper conditions in a colony of bees where these conditions were not insured in the fall is the worst of management.

75. A colony of bees in the spring of the year should therefore in all cases have a young, vigorous queen, and a well wintered colony should contain at least from three to four pounds of vigorous worker bees, numbering from 15 to 20 thousand bees. As explained in chapter 2, if these bees, even though strong in stores, are weak individually, from improper winter conditions, that colony will be subject to spring dwindling. The death rate of the individuals in spring is excessive and prohibits building up to the peak of strength at the time required.

76. An abundance of honey is required in the hive in spring because the bulk of the brood rearing will have to be done in the hive before weather conditions outside the hive permit the secretion of nectar in honey plants. Even if weather conditions would permit the secretion of nectar in the spring, the early days are windy and the part of the day when temperatures are warm are so short that the bees cannot make much headway at that season. Therefore it is of prime importance to have enough honey in the hive to feed all of the brood that should be reared at this time in advance of the honey flow if the colony is to build up. A shortage of honey not only may bring about the starvation of part of the brood in the hive under adverse weather conditions, but it will not stimulate the queen to lay a maximum number of eggs, as she should at this period of the year. It takes a large quantity of honey in the hive to encourage the bees to take care of the maximum amount of brood they can rear. Any dropping off in the continuous egg laying by the queen and the constant emergence of young bees (which are nurse bees) at this season of the year, is certain to mean that your best efforts will be futile in attempting to bring that colony to the proper strength at the proper time.

77. It is well to point out here that a number of things influence the date when the bees should reach this peak of strength in your locality coincident with the beginning of bloom of your most important surplus honey plant. In general, states east of the Missouri river and north of the Ohio river which may be included in the white clover region, honey flows are usually of short duration and intense and there is seldom a second surplus honey flow the same year. The farther north one goes the more easily this can be seen. Therefore as you may be located farther north, the more important it is to bring your colonies to this peak of strength at the proper time. In such localities with a single short intense honey flow, once the time has passed when colonies may be built up before this honey flow, the chance of securing the maximum surplus honey from such delinquent colonies that season has passed. Farther south, where frequently the important honey flows come well towards the middle of summer, the problem is opposite from that of the beekeeper farther north. For instance, in some regions east of the Mississippi where the first important honey flow comes from melilotus (white sweet clover) blooming about June 1, it would be useless for beekeepers there to build up the colonies to the peak of strength earlier. Therefore their problem is to conserve the energy of the colony as a whole during the early part of the summer and have each colony reach its peak about June 1. The honey flow in localities like this may continue for several weeks or even if the flow is short and followed by a dearth, a second or third honey flow may come later and give the beekeeper a second and a third opportunity for a honey crop. This is not true in localities as you move north until you finally reach the type of season found in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and adjacent states, where the honey flow is frequently over once and for all by July 1. In such localities any failure by the beekeeper to bring the bees up to the peak of strength at the beginning of the honey flow in that locality, which may be June 1, means that such colonies will store no surplus honey that season. The time of the honey flow may be June 1 both in the gulf states localities and the northern localities. The difference confronting the beekeeper is that weather conditions will not permit the building up of bees rapidly in the northern tier of states before the first of May. The beekeeper in the gulf coast tier of states may frequently have stimulative honey flows available for his bees and accompanied by fair weather conditions as early as latter February. In the intermountain states where the chief honey plants are alfalfa and sweet clover, several honey flows may occur from alfalfa and a long flow from sweet clover. In the northern part of this territory some beekeepers claim that the first crop of alfalfa frequently yields but little honey; others say it often yields, but frequently the colonies do not contain a sufficient field force to gather a surplus of honey from it. The same thing applies in parts of the United States where dandelions are abundant.