winter bee hives
Photo – on the left, the blue flags mark rows of onion seedlings, that are being nicely protected by the snow. The ridges/lumps on the right is row cover on hoops over arugula.
Ours bees went into winter with very light stores. In fact, they went into winter with less honey than they had in the spring. That is a little overstating, though true, because they had a lot of honey left over from 2007 that we had left for them last winter.
I was so busy last fall that I didn’t check them until late October when I went through the hives box by box and frame by frame selecting and arranging the honey for them. There were a few nice full frames of honey, but most had maybe 1/2 honey and 1/2 empty, some only on one side, etc. I stacked them with the most honey in the middle since that is where the bees tend to be. They climb upward, so each box had rather empty frames on the outside and fuller frames in the middle. I did not take any honey for ourselves. We had three hives, but one was small so I combined it with the smaller of the other two.
I panicked and made up some sugar syrup for them and put feeders on top of the hives. Although I used a thick syrup, this may have stimulated them to produce more young at a time of year that is not advised. I don’t know if that happened, or they just were really big honker bee populations, but when I took the feeders off right before freeze up, there were lots of bees in each hive.
More bees eat more though. So in late December I checked and in one hive the bees were at the top. That is a sign they are hungry. I made bee candy – table sugar with a little water boiled to dissolve and then it hardens into “candy”. I poured it in some frames with plastic foundation and poured some in a plastic container as a block. I took that down and put some in each hive.
I haven’t fed in the winter before so didn’t know how long this would last them. It has been on my mind for about a week, which usually means I should do something about it. I watched the weather forecast and made up some more candy yesterday. I took it down this afternoon. I am pleased to say it was not needed. They can make it until the expected February thaw on what they have. Usually in February it warms up for a few days and we can rearrange the hives, putting the bees back down in the bottom and stacking boxes with honey above them for them to work their way back up.
