Bee Chronicles

February 2018

Whew, what a winter so far?! Some of you know, I am a farmer. I do not believe in global warming. But, I do cut my hay a month earlier than I used to.

With the 12” of snow the second week of December (global warming I am sure), and then the 1 ½” inches of snow and 5 days of below 20^o you would think we are in for a longer colder winter. I don’t think that is necessarily so. That weather pattern was just right except it came a month too early. Winter might be over. Of course their will be some consecutive freezing days and nights accompanied by snow flurries and sleet. But, I don’t think we will be snowed in for a week. Does anyone remember Mar 13 1993? Two plus feet of snow and drifts up to 4’, power out on my road for 11 days, but the good news is the ground never froze.

If you can follow the drift of this conversation, I don’t know what will happen. Be prepared for all conditions.

My queens have started brooding. I have pollen patties on the hives and the bees are eating them. This is usually a sign that there is brood. I have fortified (honey bee healthy. vitamins, and minerals) 1:1 syrup available to the bees as front entrance feeders and field feeders.

All my hives have adequate honey stores for a little while longer. I have enough dead hives that left honey behind to bolster any hive that needs more honey.

My main work right now is to clean propolis out of all the stored boxes (hive bodies and honey supers). I am cleaning the joining edges where the boxes meet. I am scraping the rabbet shelves where the frame ears rest. I am scraping all the frame ears. This will make it easier to manipulate all the parts next spring/summer. The draw back to all this work is: there are studies that show the more propolis in the hive the more bacterial sanitary the hive is. The good news is you can sell the propolis. You can never get it all off the equipment. I hope I leave enough to help sanitize the woodwork. Spring time is a good propolis production period for the bees. You do not want to collect the spring propolis because the bees need it to sanitize and waterproof the hive living area.

A little warmer weather and I will paint what ever needs painting. A little more warmer and I will start getting frames built and refilled with new wax foundation. I have some frames with dark wax to refill with new foundation and be rotated out of the hives. I have frames damaged by wax moth larvae to get rid of.

The status of my 14 remaining hives (72 Aug 2017) is one okay nuc, 2 small (tennis ball) size clusters, 9 decent (3-4 frame faces 6-8 inches long) looking clusters, and two hives ready to split. Go figure!

All but one of my dead hives had lots of dead bees in the hive. Four were piled on the bottom board. One had no dead bees and all the others “froze”. Whatever that means? They were head into the cells and dead. Generally small clusters but some as big as a softball. All had honey adjacent to the bees.

I had treated all hives for varroa mites in October.

Be on the look out for Alder trees blooming. They are generally around water or damp ground. The pussy willows are putting on catkins (the flower bud). Watch your returning bees to seen when they start finding pollen and then try to figure out where it is coming from. What a fun bee game!

February is what I call “the mysterious die off month”. Starvation is the biggest reason. This can be mitigated with emergency feeding. Fondant (home made), dry sugar or powdered sugar on the top bars, of course syrup in the hive.

Signs of freezing is shivering but not moving around looking for food. You hardly ever see this. It happens when you are inside your house staying warm.

Get ready to do your spring mite treatment. If you can do this before there is much brood you will get a better mite kill setting you colony up for a better spring start.