JANUARY
- Begin emergency feeding with frames of honey, sugar candy, or dry sugar , if necessary.
- Clean, paint, and repair equipment
- Check apiary for vandalism, hive covers blown off, and so forth
- Read external hive
- Order packages, nucs, queens, if not done in December; and of course required
- Consider your mite and disease management program and order / construct the necessary materials (screen bottom boards, drone foundation, chemicals, sugar shake supplies, and so on)
FEBRUARY
- Check colonies for honey stores
- Continue emergency feeding with frames of honey, sugar candy, or dry sugar , if necessary.
- Read external hive
- Continue to prepare equipment for coming season
- Conduct Post Mortem on dead colonies and clean them up
MARCH
- Continue emergency feeding with frames of honey, sugar candy, or dry sugar , if necessary.
- Read external hive
- Feed pollen supplements or substitues, if needed
- First quick inspection of brood nest, if weather permits (temps above 50 degrees for 3 consecutive days)
- Check for dead colonies, conduct post mortem, clean up
- Put out Yellow Jacket/Wasp traps
- Clean out entrances and bottom boards
- Assemble section honey supers
APRIL
- Monitor colony stores, especially if weather is cold and wet
- Inspect brood nest for laying queen, disease, and so forth
- Introduce package bees on drawn comb
- Requeen colonies with failing queens
- Reverse brood chambers when weather moderates
- Add supers to strong colonies at time of maple or dandelion bloom
- Equalize strength of all colonies
MAY
- Monitor colonies for queen cells
- Control swarming
- Add more supers as necessary (oversuper)
- Place queen excluder below shallow super on colonies for comb honey
- Install packages or foundation
- Split strong colonies
- Capture swarms
- Cull and replace defective combs with full sheets of foundation
- Begin implementing an IPM program for the control of mites
JUNE
- Continue to check for queen cells
- Rear queens if you prefer your own stock
- Check colonies for disease and monitor for mites
- Remove comb honey supers when properly sealed (capped)
- Provide plenty of super space
- Control swarming
- Capture swarms
JULY
- Remove comb honey supers when properly sealed (capped)
- Check for queen cells, especially in colonies used for queen rearing
- Add sufficient super space (undersuper)
- Remove and extract early season honey crop
- Freeze comb honey to prevent wax moth damage
AUGUST
- Check colonies for disease and monitor / for mites
- Remove and extract summer honey crop
- Remove section supers
- Do not work bees unless necessary to avoid robbing
- Add more supers if needed
SEPTEMBER
- Check colonies for disease and monitor / for mites
- Provide supers for fall goldenrod and aster flows
- Requeen colonies
- Unite (combine) weak colonies
OCTOBER
- Prepare colonies for winter
- Begin fall feeding with heavy syrup (2:1) if needed
- Unite weak colonies with stronger colonies
- Put on entrance reducers to keep out mice
- Extract fall honey crop
NOVEMBER
- Finish handling honey crop
- Order new equipment for coming season
- Develop and implement your honey (and other hive products) marketing program, especially for the holiday season
- Begin late-fall feeding: sugar candy, or dry sugar
DECEMBER
- Repair and assemble hive equipment
- Order packages, queens, nucs, if you know your needs