Strange weather, bee help.

[Daisy]

I read posts about beekeepers who have struggled with too much rain and not enough rain.

I'm thinking about those who are keeping 50 and 100 hives, and more.... what they're doing when there's no rain and nothing for the bees to collect or eat?

The farmer around here said this the dryest July in a long time. The soybeans still haven't bloomed yet.

I have a couple of questions......

How can we tell (by the bees behavior), when there is a dearth of nectar?

Do you's feed your bees in times like this? Isn't that a hugh undertaking if you's have 10's of 10's of hives? If you didn't feed them, would they consume their winter stores?

And to bring up something I said earlier.

I prepare my bees sugar water with red clover water that I boil and steep. Can this clover water be considered clover honey after the bees create the honey?

Thanks in advance....

[joens]

I am not familiar with clover water is this a tea made from clover leaves? blossoms?
Joens

[loggermike]

>I'm thinking about those who are keeping 50 >and 100 hives, and more.... what they're >doing when there's no rain and nothing for >the bees to collect or eat?

Move em somewhere else(if you think they will do better)As for feeding during the honey gathering season-no(other than splits and weak stuff)If there is any chance that a flow might start somewhere,I cant take the chance of getting sugar mixed in with honey.Once any supers are on-no feeding.If all else fails then the supers can come off and feeding can begin for winter stores.
--Mike(who has seen all the supers filled in less than two weeks some years)

[Michael Bush]

The other problem I have when feeding in a dearth (which I am doing right now to establish some splits) is that it often sets of robbing from strong hives looking for sources of food.

[Daisy]

Micheal, I thought about this too and wondered if what I'm doing is right.

So far no robbing. And to answer the other question.....

I think it's dried up out there right now, I can't move my hives to another place.

Yes, I boil water and steep dried red clover blossoms and leaves in the water and then add sugar.......

I put it outside on the porch in jars upside down on a grid patio table, about four in the afternoon. In about an hour, my bees are there collecting the nectar. I think it may be fooling them into thinking it's a nectar flow.

I don't do this in the morning or early afternoon because I want the foragers to go out to the fields and bring in whatever they can find. And I rationalize that at this hour, I may not attract as many bees from miles away..... There is not another apiary near by.)

I also put a plate out there with pieces of tree bark on it and put the herbal teas in the plate and the bees fill up very fast from there. LOL, they can hardly lift off the ground they get so full.....

Anyway, I did this twice last week, because I don't think they have much to forage for. If I do it too often I reason, they won't have a place to put all of it in the hive. They are building new comb with some of it.

And I don't make it half and half. I make the nectar like I do for the hummingbirds, one third sugar to the clover water.

I wonder if this is turned into clover honey?

[Michael Bush]

Clover honey is made from clover nectar. You're giving them refined dried sugar cane sap or refined dried sugar beet sap mixed with some "natural" clover flavoring. It in no way resembles clover honey and it basically did not even come from clover. Nectar is a different pH than nectar. Nectar has other trace minerals etc. that neither clover blossoms nor refined sugar have.

Anyway, I think this is a question of technicalities anyway and technically the only thing that is clover honey is honey made from clover nectar.

[hoosierhiver]

you'd have to be putting out ALOT of sugar water to fill up your hives, a fair percentage is probably being used for food and not even being stored.