On Sun, Jan 21, 2018 at 8:01 AM, Bill T <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Since then, as a matter of course I check my hives in late February to see
> if the bees are up to the inner cover and need supplemental feed. Then I
> added a sugar board over the inner cover and moved it down in March to be
> in contact with the bees. That crushed some bees, so this year I put it on
> in the late fall right over the bees with the inner cover over the sugar
> board. even then, they did take some sugar but not much.
>
>
> So I made up another board for each and will put it over the current board
> this afternoon to help them along. So opening hives in the winter may be
> discouraged but I have found it necessary
>

I live in Middle TN.  So my weather is nowhere as severe as in Maine
or any other northern state.  I too have had hives turned over during
storms.  Some in the early spring or late fall due to hard COLD
raines.  Bees would cluster to stay alive.  Some may have been like
that for days in out apiaries.  Putting them back together and all was
well.  Even though the bees were cold and wet.

As far as feeding, I make a habit of putting dry sugar on top of the
frames in December or early January.  I use 8-frame equipment so it is
not unusual for the colony to start in the top medium box instead of
the bottom deep.  I make shims from my medium supers, I can get 6 out
of 1 super on my table saw.

I remove the OC and IC.  Put down newspaper, put a few slits in the
paper and add a 4 pound bag of sugar.  While I didn't this year, I
usually spray the sugar with water on top to give it a crust.  The
only colonies that didn't make it using this method were those that
just weren't large enough to endure the cold or stayed on brood
refusing to move to get to stores.  Usually losing hives to brood was
because of the queen laying brood lower before I put on the sugar or
because of the warm weather we are getting in Jan and Feb followed by
at least 3-4 days or more of extreme cold in late Feb or in March.

I do look in the hives in Jan and Feb on days that are at least 55 or
higher and almost no wind.  I have never had one crash because of my
opening the hives.  The main issue at this time is very "pissy" bees
wanting to give me a good dose of bee venom injections.

Having said all of this, I usually feed my bees on top of the IC with
2:1 syrup until sometime in December and start feeding them 1:1 in mid
February in an effort to build them up for the nectar flow.

I was a little late starting the 1:1 in 2017.  We had the described
warm weather in Jan-Feb with a long stretches of warm weather (1 week
or more) in Feb to early March followed by almost a week of extreme
cold.  We always have pollen from some trees in late Jan and with the
warm up, the queens started laying followed by a shutdown because of
the extreme cold.  This caused some loss of colonies.

But the long term effect of the warm weather followed by the extreme
cold became obvious when the weather turned back warm again and stayed
in the lower 50's.  Everything started blooming again and we had an
early nectar flow that only lasted about 7-10 days.

While a few of my colonies were strong enough to bring in nectar
during this short flow, most brought in almost no nectar. Other than a
couple other beeks getting enough honey to sell, most had none to just
a small amount and didn't attend the farmer's markets.

I haven't gone up on my honey prices in the 7 previous years.  But in
2017 I went up.  Honey sales can help keep a beek above water but
doesn't make him/her profitable.  Those that sell queens, packages,
and nucs are the beeks that make a living.  The price of bees over the
last 5-6 years have more than doubled.  I can't afford to purchase
packages and nucs anymore.  It splits and purchasing some queens with
a few swarms that allow me to increase my amount of colonies.  Honey
prices as I stated has been flat.  I explain to my customers that I
have to pass on my losses to them if they want to have the quality of
honey that the crave from my bees.  If I don't sell all of my
inventory I then have honey to sell early in the year when demand
starts to rise and there are no other sources of honey available to
the customers.

I ended up feeding almost all of my hives from spring until December
of 2017 just to keep them alive and have some of them increase in
size.  Thanks to Kroger for having sugar on sale in 4# bags several
times last year for around 25 cents a pound.  I purchased a 1/2 a ton
early and another 1/2 ton this past December. That in itself digs deep
into the "income" I made on my honey sales.  My only saving grace so
far is that I have double the amount of colonies than I had this time
last year.

Basically, with the major change in weather patterns in the last few
years, keeping bees through the winter is a crap shoot at best.

BTW, I move here from SC in November of 1997.  The winters here were
much colder than what I experienced in SC.  But over the last 20 years
the climate in TN is now almost exactly the same as in SC (except for
the coastal area).


-- 
De Colores,

Ken Kizer
Gamecock Apiaries
2707 Coleman Hill Rd
Rockvale, TN

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