Bee Chronicles

2 February, 2021

We are half way through an unsettling winter. It has been too warm! The bees have not flown much for the past 3 weeks (1-20 Jan). This is good, but there have been many afternoons in the high 40^o's. The bees have been confined to mostly short purging flights.

When given 3-4 hours or more there has been foraging activity. This leads to more stored food consumption than just staying clustered. I have seen the bees foraging on sawdust (they like pine the best). Have seen them on the sap of freshly split fire wood. There is a sugar content to pine sap and oak has an attractive aroma. These activities are just a sign the bees are hurting for a better source.

We are short on better sources. The Witch Hazel did not bloom the year. There was an early December frost that killed the buds. The Pussy Willow is coming along but seems about 3 weeks slow. I do have Hellebores that the bees have been on but I don't think there is much food.

I inspected my hives thoroughly on 28 December. I mentioned that there is usually a first week of January warm period in which I usually take a look at my queens. Well, it came a week early this year. My next normal inspection period is supposed to be the warm period the first week of February??

What am I looking for? Nice quantity of bees in the hive and a healthy queen. No sighs of mite infestation. Not too many hive beetles and no wax moths. What is the brood status? How much food is still in the hive and where is it located?

If I have a week population, is there still a queen? There is virtually nothing I can do with this hive except combine it with a better hive and hope. Make sure there is only one queen in the combined hive. Smoke the bees and combine. Do not spray with sugar syrup as it will chill the bees and they will die. Using the newspaper technique to combine two colonies is too much work for the bees and they will fail to cluster at night and die. Just smoke like crazy and set the two hive bodies together. Hope the bees will cluster on the queen tonight.

You don't want to mix a heavily mite invested colony with another hive. The invested bees will die anyway and the mites will only be introduced into a healthier colony.

Lots of hive beetles and wax moths is a sign of a week hive. You don't want to join a dirty hive body and a cleaner one. This colony is probably a "dead bee walking".

Is the queen still laying eggs? This will put additional food requirements on the hive. If the food is available it should be okay. If you want to keep the queen laying you might want to supplement the hive with syrup and pollen substitute. You can put sugar and/or pollen right on the top bars above the brood area. Be careful that you are not opening the hive on too cool of a day to feed.

Is the stored honey above the brood. There may be some in the peripheral areas of the hive boxes that can be moved closer to the brood or place above it for when the cluster moves up. Honey remaining in the far corners may not attract the bees during cool weather. Scratch it with a "decapping" scraper. The smell of the honey will be more attractive.

I have created a break in brooding since early January. When I hit the 30 days of broodless (second week of February) I will start feeding syrup to stimulate the queen. When the bees start taking in the syrup quickly, I will add pollen substitute to the mix. I want my queens working full bore when the red maple blooms in March.

Another trick I do! A package of bees grows slower than a wintered over colony of the same size. There are two reasons. One is the queen is settled in. Two, there is comb and food more readily available. To help mitigate this situation with my packages I will put drawn comb in them. If I have comb with honey stored in it, I am more inclined to place it in the package hive than the established hive. Three, I will purchase my packages in pairs. One with a queen and one without a queen. When I install my packages, I place the pair together in the new hive box. This gives 6 pounds of bees on that new queen. This is nearly equal to a hive that survived the winter.