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Winter feeding

5K views 12 replies 7 participants last post by  sfisher 
#1 ·
I checked my hives on 1/1/13 and found them to be pretty lite on honey. The temps were I live at this week are 40 at night and 55-60 during the day. So I started feeding them 2:1 syrup, which they are sucking down. My question is, am I doing wrong by feeding them syrup now. Should I be feeding foundant or dry sugar insted, and if so why? Thanks Steve
 
#2 ·
i'm not an expert, but i would think that if they can take the syrup down and store it around the cluster it would be better than dry sugar or fondant.

i think the main concern would be moisture, but not a problem if the 'ceiling' of the hive is insulated and/or you have a way of venting excess moisture out of the top.
 
#8 ·
My bees can take cleansing flights, they were bringing in pollen on Sunday. Next question is, do they have to turn the syrup to honey before they can eat it, or can they just eat the syrup that they stored in the comb. Also is moisture a big problem with temps in the 40s at night and 50s to 60 in the day. Or is it mainly a problem when its real cold out?
 
#12 ·
Like the OP, I checked my hive the other day when the temp was 60F.

What I found was that there were some bees making flights (I assume cleansing flights), and about 2-3 dead bees at the entrance. Saw one bee fly out of the hive, thud to the ground, buzz and flail around for a few seconds, then take to the air again. Reminded me of me staggering out of the house in the morning.

I had poured sugar on the inside cover, which is solid except for an oval ventilation hole. There is sugar right up to the edge of the hole, and there were a few bees crawling around, but they didn't appear to have eaten very much of the sugar (which was placed there in mid-December).

This was rather surprising to me, as the hive seemed pretty light going into winter- a single 8 frame deep with maybe 6-7 frames fairly full of honey. The only real winterizing I have done is reducing the entrance and putting some empty deeps next to the hive as a wind break (very windy here) and also an empty deep with its wooden cover on top of the hives metal telescoping cover to provide some dead-air-space insulation.

I had a weaker, lighter hive that starved back in early December, so I wasn't very sanguine about this one making it. Do bees use these warm periods to build their stocks up again? My concern is that they will empty out their stores of honey, we will have a cold spell (15F for a low later this week), and not be able to get to/use the sugar. I tried pushing some of the sugar through the vent hole down onto the frames in the hopes that they would access it a little better, but didnt want to open the hive up to do something like pour it across the tops of the frames or put a news paper on them and pour it on that.
 
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