Nervous about my girls.

[Jas0n Bresson]

This has been my first year. I'm over wintering 3 hives ,two that I started from nucs and one from a package.I had one of my nucs swarm on me this past summer do to being honey bound. I'm learning as I go but sometimes the hard way. I took a class at the backyard beekeepers association and have read allot of books. Quite frankly I love this new hobby but am haveing difficulty sorting through this endless amount of info. The winters in my location are long and cold and I can't help but feel I need to be doing more for them. I saw some posts referring to the mountaincamp method of feeding granular sugar. From what I gather I would remove the inner cover lay news paper down on the top bars and put the sugar on that. Then put on an empty hive body or spacer then inner cover then outer cover. Should I do this and do I smoke them when I do ?

[Jeffzhear]

Jason, I am opening up my hives this afternoon (including NUC's) as the temp is supposed to be just above freezing, up from 7 F this morning. I don't smoke the bees at those low temps and only once in awhile do a few bees actually lift off. Just be careful not to bang around too much. My intent is to add sugar today to hives that I have been sugaring. So, it's not too late. Also, this is the first year I have tried the "MountainCamp" method of granular sugar on newspaper, and have been happy with the results so far. I have a few more weeks before the weather improves so I can see how the bees have really have done. But, as of a few weeks ago, all but one hive was alive. And the one I lost was lost a few months ago...it was a late season combine of two late season swarms.

Good luck

[Velbert]

Hi Guys

I know your feeling of worries It was back in 1978 we had a hard winter here in Oklahoma snow stayed on the ground for 8/9 weeks and the temp didn't get above freezing for this time I had about 60 colonies going into winter about half were in single deeps by January the bees were cluster at the very top WHAT I did was scraped the bur comb off the top bars (I had to keep them smoked down as I scraped the top bars clean) Then I lay a single layer of news paper down and poured about 1- 1 1/2 LBS sugar on top I didn't have inner covers or any extra boxes to add on top or if I did I would have put on more sugar. I came across a few that were very sluggish I could tell they were about gone (starved) so what i did before I put sugar on them I poured some honey on the top bars and a little between frames and came back to them in a few minutes by then they had cleaned up the honey I have put on the top bars, now I would put down the news paper and the sugar on top and would spread it out to cover the top of the size of the cluster of bees.

You don't need to poke any holes in the news paper for the bees to have access to the sugar It is problely best not to because It makes ventilation.

What you want is for the moisture to collect on the under side of the news paper so the can have some water and it softens the paper and the sugar, the sugar will also collect it so the bees can easily eat the sugar

Did not lose a single colony that winter but that was way before all the other problems (mites etc)

[WVbeekeeper]

Before you go dumping sugar on you hives make sure they need it first. Just because you feel as if you need to do something for them doesn't mean that they need something.

Are Your Bees Alive, Do You Need to Feed Them? (http://wvbeekeeper.blogspot.com/2008/01/are-your-bees-alive-do-you-need-to-feed.html)

[MountainCamp]

There are a number of ways to check the hive and it's status.
Put your ear to the box and listen to the cluster. Determine where in the hive the cluster is located.
Tilt the back of the hive, easy to lift or hard. An idea of stores.
Pop the top and look at the upper box and the remaining stores in these frames. If there are stores on the frames that the bees are clustering on, your most likely alright. Stores on the other side of the hive or in the box below the cluster, you may need to feed or rearrange the stores.