sugar water

[bee target]

I was woundering if any one up north has erver given suggar water in the winter. We are suppose to have some mild temps and was wondering if it would cause any problems??? thanks Greg....

[Sundance]

Too early....... moisture is a big killer.

My first question is............. Why???

Are they short on stores??

A better option for emergency feed is dry sugar over
a single layer of newspaper over the top bars above
the cluster.

Other options are candy boards or fondant.

[bee target]

I did the dry suggar on the paper, just a little over woried, last year I lost all of my hives so I am really trying to make shure that does not happen again!! It costs to much to keep replacing when i could be expanding...

[honeyman46408]

Have they taken the dry sugar? Keep watch and don`t let them run out!

[bee target]

It looks like they have there is some sort of stains in the suggar and one hive had a couple of bees sitting on the suggar untill I took the top off to peek!

[drobbins]

here's a pretty crappy youtube video of mine taking dry sugar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZYtGNa6S6c

there's no doubt they're all over it
I have some light hives this year that are ignoring it
"you can lead em to sugar but you can't make em eat"

Dave

[Brent Bean]

Sugar syrup is impractical this time of year, they don’t get enough time to take advantage of it even when the weather turns warmer, because the night time temperatures still drop to below freezing . The syrup stays to cold for them to consume. They are cold blooded creatures, and as Sundance mentioned moisture is a big killer.
Sugar over paper is the best option this time of year for us northern beekeepers. On a good note when the daytime temperatures rise above 40 degrees and we have a little sun to go with it, they will loosen or break cluster to either relocate food reserves to the brood area of the cluster or will relocate the cluster to areas of food. So if your bees have food left and are healthy they will survive.

[bleta12]

I was woundering if any one up north has erver given suggar water in the winter. We are suppose to have some mild temps and was wondering if it would cause any problems??? thanks Greg....

We are probably over a month away from feeding anything liquid in North East.
Open the hive, this week will be mild, see where the bees are. If they are all on top of the inner cover most likely they need emergency feeding, dry sugar on top of news paper, candy or fondant.
On what configuration are your hives? 1 deep 2 or more.
Take notes, Tip the hives before they go to winter and you will have a feeling on the weight.
Readjust the supper time, take the suppers earlier so more honey is stored on your wintering configurations, change and adopt.

Reconsider the fall location of your hives in favor to a better honey flow and feed if you need to.

The best time to deal with winter reserves is Fall, not now. Now we only react to what we did not do in the fall.

Good luck Gilman

[bee target]

It looks to me like you wet the paper? not too bad of a vid...