As you prepare you colonies for winter, what actions would you recommend upon finding the following situations?
A moderately strong colony with a large population of drones.
Robbing is often a problem in the fall. What are the primary conditions that initiates the robbing instinct?
A weak colony with a few wax moth larvae tunneling in the outside coms of the brood chamber.
A colony with two full-depth hive bodies containing brood, honey and pollen with an empty medium depth honey super on top.
A strong colony with inadequate food stores (approximately 20 lbs. less than recommended for your region).
A colony will starve in mid-winter even though there is plenty of honey in the lower brood & food chambers. Explain why a colony will starve if there is little honey in the upper chamber and may also starve if the upper chamber is honey bound.
Quiz Answers:
Upon finding a large population of drones in the fall, the beekeeper needs to search for the queen, eggs and worker larvae. In a queen-right colony, the drones are evicted in the fall, where as in a queenless colony, the drones are allowed to remain.
Distribution of food in the hive is another important consideration when preparing colonies for winter. During the winter, the cluster eats its way upwards, thus the uppermost hive body should contain a large proportion of the honey and pollen. In addition, the bees and brood should be in the lower portion of the hive in the fall. In this particular colony the hive bodies should be reversed to give the proper food arrangement.
A colony that is so weak that it cannot adequately defend itself from invasion of wax moth should be either killed or preferably united with a strong colony using the newspaper technique. The weak colony should be placed below the strong colony.
The empty medium-depth honey supper on top of the hive should be removed in preparation for winter. Leaving it on the hive would result in the cluster arriving in the top hive body and not having adequate food stores. Even if a colony is starving in late winter, it will not move back down to get food.
Upon finding a colony lacking in adequate food stores, the colony should be fed. The options available to the beekeeper include feeding concentrated sugar syrup, transferring combs of honey from another hive if you are sure that disease is not present or providing sugar candy. Feeding the sugar syrup is probably the best option if the weather will allow the bees to handle the syrup and ripen it.
Distribution of food in the hive is an important fall management consideration, since the cluster moves upward during the winter. Even if a colony is starving in late winter, it will not move down to get food. If the lower chamber has honey in the outer frames after the cluster moves up. Move those frames up above the cluster. If the uppermost chamber lacks food they will starve to death. A colony may also starve if the upper chamber is honey-bound since the cluster often fails to move up and remains in the lower chamber. In this case the lack of open cells in the upper hive body prevents the cluster from moving. Scratch the center combs on the honey bound frames to allow the bees to start eating that honey a month before it is needed. The hive also needs adequate stored pollen to last until the spring flowers bloom. In our mountains the honeybees frequently do not store enough.