Emi Mack
06-01-2008, 03:07 PM
Hello, I'm new and this is a wonderful site! And I started keeping bees three years ago.
So last spring I fed my bees with crystalized honey left over in the frames from the previous years extraction.
After removing all of my honey supers in the fall, my extractor motor broke, so the supers stayed stacked up in the foyer for about four weeks before I got the extractor going again.
Once I started extracting, I was amazed at how much of the capped honey had already crystalized, plus there were partially capped frames that were starting to ferment, I assume because it wasn't ripe enough when I took it off the hives. I took out what I could, soaked all of my frames in luke warm water to clean out the cells and then stacked them by the wood stove to dry before storing them for the winter.
This spring, one of my four hives was dead. Several of the frames were partly full of dead bees head down in the cells with only the barest bit of backside sticking out, while next to them was capped, fully crystalized honey. I imagine they starved to death because they couldn't use the honey.
There were also some other weird things: Some sunken caps with nothing underneath them; half a dozen cells in the corner of one frame with a whitish residue at the bottom but nothing else.
Now, two of my remaining three hives are really weak. We've had a cold, wet, windy spring and it was only three days ago that I was able to get into the hives thoroughly. The weak colonies have less than three frames of brood each, though I did find one of their queens and she looked big, fat and strong to me, then again I'll be the first to say "what do I know?" Also, I didn't find any pollen stores in either hive.
These hives also had primarily hard, crystalized honey. In a minor panic, I removed one of the brood chambers from each (they were empty barring hard honey), took out as much of the crystalized honey that I could without disturbing any brood from the other ones and slapped top feeders full of thick sugar syrup onto each one. I also inserted one foundationless frame into each as I would really love to see how that works!
Now, I'm not sure what to do with them! I've never treated them with chemicals, but maybe I should? I didn't feed syrup last fall or this spring (until now!) but we have a very long winter here (Cape Breton) and sometimes a miserable spring, so maybe I should be stuffing them with syrup for their own good?
The bottom board and lower brood chamber tend to get very damp and even moldy every spring, and I was also wondering if I should be switching to bottomless hives and if they can winter in this cold climate like that.
Any experienced advice on how to get these colonies hearty again would be greatly appreciated. I won't import nucs because Cape Breton is one of the only places left that doesn't have Verroa and when the guy down the road brought in some nucs from the mainland last year, they ALL had Verroa and he loaded them up and drove them right back to the mainland again.
Strangely enough, the last hive is going like gangbusters!
Thanks again, bee safe
Emi
So last spring I fed my bees with crystalized honey left over in the frames from the previous years extraction.
After removing all of my honey supers in the fall, my extractor motor broke, so the supers stayed stacked up in the foyer for about four weeks before I got the extractor going again.
Once I started extracting, I was amazed at how much of the capped honey had already crystalized, plus there were partially capped frames that were starting to ferment, I assume because it wasn't ripe enough when I took it off the hives. I took out what I could, soaked all of my frames in luke warm water to clean out the cells and then stacked them by the wood stove to dry before storing them for the winter.
This spring, one of my four hives was dead. Several of the frames were partly full of dead bees head down in the cells with only the barest bit of backside sticking out, while next to them was capped, fully crystalized honey. I imagine they starved to death because they couldn't use the honey.
There were also some other weird things: Some sunken caps with nothing underneath them; half a dozen cells in the corner of one frame with a whitish residue at the bottom but nothing else.
Now, two of my remaining three hives are really weak. We've had a cold, wet, windy spring and it was only three days ago that I was able to get into the hives thoroughly. The weak colonies have less than three frames of brood each, though I did find one of their queens and she looked big, fat and strong to me, then again I'll be the first to say "what do I know?" Also, I didn't find any pollen stores in either hive.
These hives also had primarily hard, crystalized honey. In a minor panic, I removed one of the brood chambers from each (they were empty barring hard honey), took out as much of the crystalized honey that I could without disturbing any brood from the other ones and slapped top feeders full of thick sugar syrup onto each one. I also inserted one foundationless frame into each as I would really love to see how that works!
Now, I'm not sure what to do with them! I've never treated them with chemicals, but maybe I should? I didn't feed syrup last fall or this spring (until now!) but we have a very long winter here (Cape Breton) and sometimes a miserable spring, so maybe I should be stuffing them with syrup for their own good?
The bottom board and lower brood chamber tend to get very damp and even moldy every spring, and I was also wondering if I should be switching to bottomless hives and if they can winter in this cold climate like that.
Any experienced advice on how to get these colonies hearty again would be greatly appreciated. I won't import nucs because Cape Breton is one of the only places left that doesn't have Verroa and when the guy down the road brought in some nucs from the mainland last year, they ALL had Verroa and he loaded them up and drove them right back to the mainland again.
Strangely enough, the last hive is going like gangbusters!
Thanks again, bee safe
Emi