April in the bee year
The colony doubles. Fruit blossom, dandelion and often rape already fill the combs. Add the honey super too late and you breed swarm mood.
- Colony strength
- c. 25,000
- Brood
- full frames
- Forage
- Fruit, rape
April is the first production month. Fruit trees, dandelion and, in many districts, winter rape open a nectar front the colony has worked towards all winter. Strength climbs from around 15,000 to 25,000 bees — if space, pollen and weather line up.
At the same time April is impatient weather: a summer day, a night frost, an easterly. Open brood chills, nectar granulates in the comb, foragers stay on the ground. The beekeeper has to react quickly and still not take the hive apart every week.
Too little room in April is swarm mood in May.
In the colony
Comb building is under way. Young bees secrete wax, draw white comb and raise drones. The brood nest can fill two boxes. Honey from early fruit flow is often fed straight back — the first crop is rarely the one that reaches the jar.
Queen cells this early are unusual, but possible in early sites and in colonies that came through winter very strong. Anyone seeing queen cells in April gave the super too late, or has a colony genetically set on reproduction.
Beekeeping work
Add the honey super once the lower box is dense with bees and nectar is flowing — often around cherry or rape bloom. Foundation in the super if the flow is pulling; drawn comb if the weather is undecided and the bees will otherwise not go up.
Hang a drone frame and cut it out later: biotechnical varroa control before the mite population explodes in summer. Make nuclei now only from very strong colonies, and only if nurse bees and forage will carry them. The rule remains: grow first, split later.
Forage and pollen
Fruit blossom (cherry, plum, pear, apple) and dandelion set the picture. Rape can, where it stands, make April the main flow — then the super must be on in time, or the colony stores nectar in the brood nest and the queen goes into swarm mood.
Rape and fruit honeys granulate fast. Anyone who wants a single-origin crop extracts after the bloom, not in June when everything is mixed.
At the apiary
- Add the honey super once the flow pulls
- Insert a drone frame
- Check space in the brood box; move stores to the side
- Watch the weather: night frost and easterlies
- No more winter mite treatments — brood is present
Forage this month
Fruit blossom · Dandelion · Winter rape · Maple
