2023 Spring Progress Reports

Good Morning,

South central Alaska continues to receive more snow and California is trying to hang on to winter.  Last year on this date the almond bloom had peaked in a lot of areas and Donna and I were watching the petals fall from the trees.  This year most  of the trees are still in the bud stage and the flowers are just beginning to emerge.  As many of you know, from Christmas until the end of January had one storm after another rolled through California.  This delayed a few of the beekeeping chores for the commercial guys.  Specifically, application of pollen supplements and stimulative feed for brood building.  Following the letup in the rainy weather, beekeepers began to move hives into the orchards in preparation for the bloom.  Weather patterns shifted once again and this time instead of bringing rain, large amounts of cooler air settled into the region. Those same major high pressure systems sending warm moist ocean air north to Alaska on the west side of the high pressure cell  are pulling cooler air south on the east side of the high and right into the west coast.  This has caused the bloom to be delayed.  Cool weather still persists with the 10 day forecast even calling for a mix of rain and snow next week in the Sacramento Valley.

 
So what does this mean to us...

First, I want to make it clear that I am speaking in general and not specifically for the supplier of our packages.

 
Hives have not developed as strongly as in years past.
In general, hives going into the orchards were below strength throughout the region.  This was due to the before mentioned rainy weather and lack of easy access to the hives.

When bees go into the orchards below strength, the beekeepers managing the hives are depending upon the orchard bloom to turn things around and have the hives bounce back.

When a bout of cool weather stalls the bloom from developing, the hives stagnate waiting for that pollen protein source to arrive.  Once that pollen does arrive, the hives tend to rebound rapidly.

What this means for us is that in general development of hives are somewhat delayed.

Until hives build in strength, beekeepers are unable to remove frames of surplus brood from the orchards to make up strong queenless colonies necessary to raise queens.

These special colonies called cell builders are the ones that the queen breeders graft new cells from their breeder queens into.  14 days after grafting the queens, those cells are placed into mating nucleus colonies that are made up out of surplus bees from the orchard colonies.

Until the pollination is complete in the orchards, beekeepers are reluctant to remove any bees.  The growers want all the bees they can get until everything is pollinated.  For the larger queen producers, this is several thousand pounds of bees that are transferred from the orchards to the mating nucleus hives.

Of course, when you put queens in mating nucleus hives, you expect them to fly in a few days and begin mating so that you can have fertile queens to put in the packages.

In order to mate there has to be an abundant supply of mature drones.  This comes from mature hives that are beginning to get crowded.

With the onset of cool weather, the slow start and the delay in development drone production this year is also delayed.

So this, in general, is what is happening in the bee yards of California.

This is part of the reason that Donna and I monitor the situation in California so that we can alert you to any potential changes, challenges, or difficulties in the production of our packages.

 

At this point, our packages and delivery schedule remain unchanged.

 

There is enough flexibility to overcome these difficulties without changing anything in our schedules.  They are just the challenges associated with farming.

Importers of packages in the late March and very early days of April may have a bit more challenge.  Deliveries by mid- and late April should not be affected.

At this time we still have available room on our order.

We expect to sell out in the next week or two.

If you have friends that have not ordered their bees yet, let them know.

We will keep you informed of any further developments.

Steve and Donna

 

 

Hello beekeepers,

 

We thought we would take a few moments this afternoon to write and update on the progress of our package bees in California.   As we have been monitoring the weather in California and the progress of the hives, we are becoming increasingly concerned about maintaining the schedule of our bee shipments. At this moment we still expect to have the bees delivered on time on our original schedule.

We wanted to alert you that there is the possibility that these shipment days will not come to pass and that shipments will be delayed by a week.

This is not a for sure thing. Much depends upon how the weather patterns change in California over the next two weeks.

I'm including a picture taken from the crop progress report that pretty much illustrates the situation in California. As many of you know there has been significant rain and snow over the past couple of weeks. The 10-day forecast does not show any huge changes. That is what is concerning Donna and me.

From the included picture of the flooded orchard you can see the general situation of beekeepers in California. The almond growers are very protective of their crops and of their orchards. The bloom has been delayed and is not finished yet. There has been very minimal be flight time to pollinate the crop. Orchard growers need every single bee that they can get to finish off the pollination. The bloom continues to progress even though the bees cannot fly to pollinate. From the included picture you can see that access to the hives is limited; this is typical throughout the region.

At this point everything hinges upon the production and mating of good quality queens and that totally depends upon the weather.

I detailed this process in my previous update a couple of weeks ago.  

I am including two links if you wish to look further into the weather picture.

 

The first link covers beyond the 10-day forecast out to 2 weeks.

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/814day/

 

This second link covers the rest of the month of March.

https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/WK34/

 

This will give you an idea of the trend that we are looking at.

We have had several calls over the last few days of beekeepers expressing concerns about the quality of the packages and the quality of the queens when there is poor weather involved in the production of those things.

We have been working with our supplier over the past 20 years, and we understand how he models his business around quality.  In general, any reputable package producer and queen producer is staking their reputation on the quality and viability of every queen and package they produce.  Years of building a successful business can be significantly damaged by producing a poor quality product even once.  If it looks like the queens will not be good queens or the packages will not be good packages, our supplier will not sell them.   I suspect this is true among all of the larger producers of packages upon which Alaskan bee suppliers rely.  Rather than selling poor packages and marginal queens, suppliers postpone their production until conditions are right.  

What this means for us is that those beekeepers that ordered packages for the 15th of April may find that we need to shift their arrival date to the following weekend. Those that expected them on the 15th will find that they actually arrive on the 22nd.

Those that ordered bees for the 22nd will find that they actually arrive a week later on the 28th.

I will stress once again that this is not something that we expect at this moment but something that could happen.

Donna and I are well aware of the very busy spring schedules of many of our beekeeping friends.  We know that this will be an inconvenience to some beekeepers if things are delayed and shifted a week later.  The bottom line is we would rather inconvenience you than to push for packages and queens that are substandard.

Steve and Donna

 

 

 

March 13th 2023:

Package Bee update #3

3-13-23

Good evening beekeepers,

This is package bee update number three.

As you recall the first update said that they were having challenging times in California with the continued rain and snow.

The second update sent out one week ago said there was the possibility that bee shipments could be delayed to ensure we had good quality Queens.

This third update is going out is to let you know that the possibility of shifting dates has now become a probability of shifting dates.

The weather systems in California have seen very marginal improvement. Another set of storms is due to roll in on Tuesday.

The 10-day forecast shows continued cool and wet weather. The almond bloom is still progressing slowly.  Hives are still trapped in the orchards.

Normally at this time of the year the almond bloom is finished and beekeepers are well underway in retrieving their hives from the orchards and putting them in their spring and summer locations.

Each one of these holding yards winds up containing a little over 100 hives each.

It is to these yards that the crews go to shake surplus bees to establish their cell builders and their mating nucleus colonies as well as later into our packages.  

The growth of the hives has progressed fairly well inside the orchards.  Most of the problems we are facing deal with access to the hives without damaging the orchards with equipment.  There is very little gravel in the Sacramento River valley.  The soils become very soft when they have had a lot of rain.

In addition to this, orchard growers still want to retain the bees as long as there are any flowers still on the trees.

Donna and I talked to our bee supplier both yesterday and today about the difficulties that the beekeepers are facing in California.

A number of package suppliers have already announced that they are postponing and delaying their delivery dates.  This is due to both the cool weather and rain slowing the production of queens as well as gathering hives back to central locations rather than scattered in the orchards.

Although other suppliers have postponed their bee shipments, that is not the case yet with us.  However, Donna and I both feel that there is increasing likelihood that we will shift our delivery dates by one week.  We think that the odds of delay are 60 to 70% at this moment.

As your supplier, it is part of our job to make sure that you have adequate time to prepare your schedule to receive the bees if the date is different than the one you originally chose.

Normally around the 1st week of April we send out a confirmation letter to let you know exactly what we have in our database - the type of package(s ) that you ordered, the location that you expect them to be for pick up, and the date that you selected to receive them.

This allows us to make minor adjustments in the order in case something has changed.

With the potential shift of everything moving to a week later, we expect that there will be a few folks who may have difficulty with this.

To ensure everything runs smoothly, the more time we have to be aware of this situation the easier it is for us to organize the bee shipment.  If somebody cannot receive their bees on a particular day, Donna and I need to find somebody who can trade places with you or work out some other type of arrangement.

We can do a couple of these things at the last minute but for sure we can't do bunches and bunches of them.

If shifting a week later absolutely will not work for you, please let us know.

We have already identified some people in this situation as some have already informed us in response to our last letter.

Likewise, if it makes absolutely no difference when you receive your bees, that is extremely valuable for Donna and I to know as well as it allows for us to adjust for beekeepers whose schedules will not work.

We will continue to monitor the situation in California and let you know as soon as we have a definitive answer about when our packages are likely to be available for us.

Steve and Donna

 

March 22nd 2023:

Package Bee update #4

Hello once again Beekeepers,

 April 8th 2023:Package Bee update #5 

April 8th 2023

Hello Beekeepers,

 In the next several days the high temperature will climb as far as 78°. This is great mating weather for our queens. I talked to John about the queens and how they are coming along. He said that the early batch of queens looked to be too unreliable for his standards. He said this next batch of queens that is coming out now is looking really good. I expect that we will have no further problems with our bee shipments. Some of the producers that are farther up the valley from John our reported to be having continued tough times.

By now everyone should have received the Bee Order Confirmation of Details letter and had time to respond back with any corrections or problems that they have had.  We have resorted the list to reflect those individual changes and have the shipments re-balanced out.  Thank you to those who let us know that you were flexible on when your bees arrive.  It really helped us out!  

As we have done in the past, we will be sending out detailed pick up instructions for your packages a few days before the packages arrive. For those of you who are picking up on the 22nd, this letter will go out on the 19th. For those of you that are picking up on the 29th, the letter will go out on the 26th.  That way you will have the latest information about the pickup site and schedule, and it will not have scrolled too far down on the screen for you to be unable to find it!  

In general, we will be using the same points of pickup that we did last year. The one exception is going to be Palmer on the 29th of April (our second shipment) as our traditional Palmer host will be unavailable. We will be looking for an alternative site to distribute the bees for that day.  We would like to find someplace close to the town of Palmer that would be convenient for folks to pick up their bees from. A u-shaped or drive-thru driveway we have found works the best. If you would be willing to host a bit of madness on Saturday the 29th please let us know.