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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