I'm northern NY, and have lived and farmed here for a quarter century. This has been the longest and most sustained cold winter in my experience. Never has it started so early in December with deep cold, and stayed so deeply cold continuously; sort of like four months of January. My plants outside are delayed at least three weeks from recent years and two weeks off the longstanding norms.
And I picked this winter as my first one to keep bees! Though I've had bees living, unmanaged, in my barns for almost as long as I've been here - until the winter of 2012-2013. They mysteriously disappeared sometime in the late winter last year. When three new swarns took up residence late in the Spring I had them cut-out and hived. Last Fall I decided my goal was to simply to keep them alive through the upcoming winter - to just do better than my barn. Even as I insulated, quilt-boxed and wrapped them up, I had no idea what they would be facing.
But luckily I found BeeSource, and more importantly, Lauri, I read the recipe you generously posted for making sugar bricks and made some for my hives. I put the first ones in on December 22nd and restocked steadily all winter. Day after tomorrow it will finally be in the 60s, so I will have my first chance to open and really examine the hives, but I am sure that they survived due in large part to your sugar brick recipe. (I know they're doing OK because at the last restock point it was warm enough to take off the quilt box - briefly - and peer in at all those lovely bees brimming up in every seam. All well nurtured by your wonderful bricks through this long awful winter - and even now through these interminable weeks of waiting for the delayed start to the plants' growing season, when it's still too cold for syrup feeding.
So Polar Vortex: Be ****ed! My bees laughed merrily all winter, snuggly-wrapped up in their blankets and with a constant feast of Lauri's Magnificent Sugar Cookies to see them through the cold. Thank you, Lauri!
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