Bee Chronicles Feb 2016

What a year? Today is up to 40^o after a couple of days hovering around 10^o. We are starting the weather jerk around game. This is the hardest time of the year for the bees. Will they have enough honey? Will they be strong enough and disease free enough to survive? Are there enough bees in the cluster? What can I do, oh my, oh my?? Try Praying!

Honestly, there is little you can do now. My axiom, “feed for the spring in the fall” comes into play now. You have had to already accomplish everything you could have done. Now it is “calmly” (heh, heh, heh) sit back and see what happens.

If you need to and have the proper place, you can paint empty supers and hive bodies. You can buy/make more wood ware if you plan on expanding. You can start putting frames together, but don’t put the wax foundations in yet. If you handle wax foundation while the foundation is too cool it will shatter like thin glass. If you get it into the frames and the mice find where you store it they may eat some of it just as a test to see if it is good. It does smell good. So, then you have just wasted some of the foundation. Best to wait until it is warm outside and you are ready to insert the frames in the boxes and put them on the hive before putting wax foundation in the frames.

When spring does come it will be interesting to see how the abnormally warm December and January affected the flowers. There were many trees, shrubs, and wild flowers that started to bloom after Christmas and into January. These blooms got frozen 2d week of January. How many flower buds got damaged to the point they don’t open? How many will open but are damaged internally and won’t produce pollen or nectar? You will need to be prepared to substitute feeding for both pollen and nectar.

Pollen patties store in the freezer well. Get with your bee buddy and have a few on hand. When the red maple starts (or not) to bloom put partial patties on the hives. This is good insurance. If you don’t need the patties it will help boost the queen to lay more eggs. If you do need them you made the correct guess. By partial patty: I cut my patties into 1” wide strips. In a robust hive I might put 1-4 strips. In a so so hive I put one strip. I don’t want more pollen patty in the hive than the bees can consume in one week. The hive beetles will lay eggs in the patties. It takes 11 days for a hive beetle egg/larvae to hatch. The bees will eat around and kill the hive beetle larvae. We don’t need any extra beetles hatching out. As the hive population increases you can add more strips as needed for one weeks feeding. I also use the pollen patties as a leveling tool. With intermittent cool days the bees will bring in lots of pollen and nectar and get the queen all worked up, then a cool spell sets in “cooling” her down. This is very stressful, so the queen just stops laying eggs. You want her to lay steadily and even, staying as happy as possible. This will create a nice even population expansion in the hive. In 21 days there will be more bees to take over the pollen/nectar gathering and you can slack off of the supplements if you desire. Or just keep pushing the queen and create hives that can be split. If you don’t want more hives your bee buddy might.

Being prepared to supplement the nectar flow with 1-1 syrup also helps level out the warm/cool fluctuations on the nectar collection end of the equation.

In between all this fluctuation you need to be prepared to recognize and hopefully save your starving colonies. You can open the top of a hive on a cold, sunny, windless day. Don’t pull frames. Don’t break the cluster. Look between the frame top bars. Do you see bees moving around? Starving bees shiver more than cool bees in a cluster. That movement does look different. I can’t readily describe it. There will also be lots of bees with their heads in the cells so deep you can only see stinger ends. Use your junior led flashlight to look in there.

A moist food patty will be called for under starvation conditions. We have talked about fondant as a good food patty. Here is a recipe that will also work with stuff found in the kitchen.

Sugar Candy

15 lbs of sugar (granulated or powdered)

3 lbs of glucose (from drug store) or white corn syrup (Karo)

4 cups of water

½ tsp Cream of Tartar

I don’t know what that little bit of cream of tartar is supposed to do?

You can powder regular granulated sugar in a coffee grinder or blender.

Glucose is used in wine making so maybe the wine supply store, health food store or drug store?

You will need to do the math to reduce this to feed for one hive, or just share the batch with others. 5 lbs sugar to 1 lbs corn syrup or 1lbs sugar to 1/5^th lbs syrup. Why do you need corn syrup and water, why not just make a paste with the water? The sugar needs to be watered down so the bees can process it. They add water to sugar to make honey.

Welcome to February the “Mysterious Die Off Month”