I have a question, this year i purchased 2 nucs and once the bottom brooder box was full i added a second brooder box on top. Recently i went to check on bees and to prepare them for winter. I notice the top brooder boxes i added were not being used and were still empty. The hive is full of bees and appeared healthy. Should i remove second brooder box as i plan on adding a rapid feeder and quilt box for moisture and feel if i place everything on top a empty box the bees in bottom box will not break from cluster and if they do in search of sugar they will be to far away.
Second Brooder Box
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I suspect it may be a bit late in the year to start feeding syrup. At this point I would make a few candy boards or go with mountain camp feeding. I think you want about 50+ lbs of stores in your location. I would remove the deep on top if it is completely empty because you want the food just above the bees going into winter so they can easily get to it.
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I would never want to contradict Mr. Fud as he has more experience than me (plus he owns a mansion and a yacht) but I'm about 60 miles north of you and our weather is still pretty mild. It looks like highs in the 60's for the next ten days or so and even with the high winds yesterday, my bees were flying. I'll assume they were foraging late pollen as we did have an early frost over the weekend here. I would definitely remove the second brood box at this point, I'm seeing more dead bees (not a concerning amount) as the cluster reduces to winter bees. I'm on double deeps and have a top feeder on right now and may add another gallon of syrup to each today and then finish off before it turns cold, get the feeders off, hives wrapped (I'm already done with this) and the quilt boxes on. I'm planning on building a 2" feeding shims and using protein patties once it gets cold. I stand to be corrected by someone around here with more experience, but after the cold settles in, we should our first spring pollen sources with skunk cabbage in late February. At that point, I think we can start looking at pollen patties to get the spring brood going strong.
Ditto on removing excess space and keeping them snug. As far as feeding. One way to get feed on when its cold is a sugar slurry. Just pour sugar onto wax paper and spritz with water to create the slurry. Mine are snacking on that now and it feeds water back to the bees which is essential in winter. I personally believe that starvation is misidentified sometimes as cause of death when lack of water is the culprit.
In general bees do not take syrup that is below 50 degrees, so if you can keep the syrup above this temperature they may take it. You may have to warm it up every morning to get it to a point the bees will take it. The sugar slurry is a wetter version of mountain camp, and makes sense if you are not adding so much water into the hives that it condenses and gets the bees wet and cold.
Have you seen my mansion and yacht, they never seemed to arrive in my possession
Nope, haven't seen it 😅
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Have you seen my mansion and yacht, they never seemed to arrive in my possession
Not sure if this is the whole cartoon but it's the only one where Elmer get's the better of bugs.
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