Bee Chronicle Dec. 5 2017

Would you believe my bees are still bringing pollen into the hive.? I see a very short purple weed under the fallen over grass.

Would you believe, I believe we are in for another strange, warm winter?

These 60 degree days are good for inspecting your hives. In the afternoon (hottest time) with no wind, you can open up the hive and take a look. But what am I looking for?

Brood would be the first real great indicator. I like my queens laying at least until Thanksgiving and preferably longer. Longer is better for more young bees in the spring. I had 6 laying queens in January last year. I have 12 queens laying right now.

Another thing to look for is stored honey for winter food. Is there enough? Does anyone know what enough is? An entire brood box is a good estimate to get to the end of February. If you don’t have 10 deep frames of honey stored you might consider feeding syrup while it is still warm enough to make and store honey.

Another thing to look for is stored pollen. The larvae need it to grow AND when a bee comes out of the capped cell it has to be fed within two hours. If there is brood but little pollen, put pollen patties on the top bars directly above the brood. Use a very small portion of a patty. Maybe one inch wide 2-4” long. The bees will not eat pollen patties unless the queen is brooding. That is one way to tell easily if she is laying eggs.

Make sure your entrance reducers are in. It keeps the mice out. They are looking for a warm protected area to winter over.

Close up the bottoms of your screened bottom hives. This keeps the cold winds out. It is my experience that open bottoms may be the worst way to winter bees. Next (late) spring remove the closures because they will be covered with crud and wax particles that the hive beetles will lay eggs in. It also attracts wax moths. In a hollow tree this crud accumulates in the bottom of the hollow and the wax moths clean it up reducing infestations of other stuff. That can’t happen in such a small space as between the bottom closure and the screen.

Jennifer Berry (UGA) says, “The best feeder is a hole in the top of the hive”. She uses migrating tops with no inner cover. She drills 2 holes in the top the size of a normal canning jar lid. She uses ½ gallon jars so she can see how much syrup there is. Using a glass jar also absorbs sunlight heating the syrup so the bees eat it more easily. I know folk who drill the hole and use a 1 or 2 gallon bucket with holes in the lid inverted over the hole in the hive top so they don’t have to refill so often. The thought behind the top feeder is the bees are always moving up to new food. Any small amount of heat will rise. This heat is nearly negligible. But anything helps. I think the Inner Cover should stay in place to counter dripping. Damp bees don’t do well.

A thought for the future is: How to break the egg laying cycle to reduce mite populations