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Date: | Fri, 24 Feb 2012 20:27:32 -0500 |
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On 24-Feb-12, at 7:02 PM, Peter L Borst wrote:
> Like, why would anyone open up all their colonies in February in
> Pennsylvania?
Hi Pete and all
Most beeks here agree with you Pete. Not me though. I put a 2" rim
on each hive in the autumn as I feed with baggies and need space on
top of the frames. The rim stays on all winter until the queen
excluders go on. On sunny warm (above freezing) windless days most
winters , I open the flaps of the coreplast winter sleeves, remove
the styrofoam and gently lift the inner cover to see what is going
on. Usually, the bees are clustered down in the frames. Not this
year, they are up busy in the rim space working the fondant and
flying most days. Six of my 13 hives were this active Jan 6 and have
never clustered. The winter of 2009/2010 was warmer than this winter
and that's the first time in 40 years I used fondant. I got the
recipe from the Bee-L archives. That year all but one of my hives
survived. This year all are still alive yesterday when I picked up 2
live drones from the top bars of one hive. I won't pull frames until
we're sure that spring is here for good.
Bob Darrell
Caledon Ontario (kinda Northerly Easterly)
Canada
44N80W
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