Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: Finman on January 23, 2005, 06:04:04 am
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We are talking from polar circle to jungle. My colleagues in Finland have different weather if they live 500 km to north.
In southern Finland snow melts away at the beginning of August. All snow is gone usually before first of May. Willows starts to bloom usually first of May. It also means that ground frost has melted.
It is end of May when apple trees, dandelions, mapples and many other garden plants starts to bloom. Also swift comes to Finland, and it is summer then (Apus apus). I have 15 birdhouses for them.
http://www.avesphoto.com/website/pictures/SWFCOM-1.jpg
Bees starts brood raising when they get pollen from willows at the beginning of May. It takes to 2-box hive 1,5 month that it is big enough to gather honey. If hive is 5 frame after winter, it takes 2 months to get itself to get big enough.
Usually we can add first super (third box) at beginning of June.
During 12 years I have feeded pollen to hives to start them to raise brood 3 weeks before normal. When willow start, big numbers of new bees are hatching. Hives get a good false start compared with natural beekeeping.
May is quite cool. On some week bees can fly and on some it is so cold that they cannot. If it does not rain in May it will be lack of water in summer.
Farmers starts their field works at the beginning of May. It depends how it rains or how fields became dry. In August fields are in frost.
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We can usually start working the gardens in April, but we still get frost until about the end of May. Our springs are cool, and our summers are mild as well. It's rare for the temperatures to get above 90F
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i usually have my garden planted by the first of april but some years i can plant in march.
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We have 10.6. such a date that night frost does not come any more.
The middle of May is good to start garden works. Before that soil is cold and wet.
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I usually start seeing the dandilon bloom in early April which is the starting of our pollen season. Maple trees are a major source of pollen starting about that time as well. The first major honey flow starts in late May and runs to the end of June or first part of July. Nector slows to near nothing then picks back up with a fall honey flow in mid to late August with Aster or Goldernrod.
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Every year is a little different. Basically in new England we have little to no spring. It goes from Winter in March to summer. April is usually the month that the last of snow melts. Last year at the end of April we had dandelion and apple blossoms, and that was after the coldest Winter in recored history. It was like all of a sudden it was summer.
I get my bees on April 9th. General wisdom around here is that gives them a month to build up for the nectar flow that begins on May 10th.
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I like to be planted by march 14th at least so that is spring for me, bye
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You plant what in March???
Down here everything I plant before mid-April just doesn't make it. Then I ain't got no green thumb either.
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So fare everyone knows me fare and wide as a master at gardening and I am only 16. People know me for it and I dont know them. Right now I am working on a special hybrid radish sent to me to test it out before released on the market, it was now released and I got it to 17 pounds which is bigger than a basket ball, I grow alot of veggies right through the winter, mostly root plants, just through some straw over em and they will keep going. I grow anything I can get my hands on, I was looking for new seeds Jan. 1. what do you want to know about and I will tell ya, bye