Hello All,
I have heard the hypothesis put forth by Serbia before. Without a trip to 
Serbia and seeing and testing for myself I can not say the hypothesis is 
correct or incorrect. Do bees feed winter bees different? I do not know.

For myself its simple. After over forty years among the bees I have noticed 
in areas of hard winters like my area the old bees with tatered wings and 
shiny backs will not be around in early spring. Not rocket science.

In short you need in our area  5-8 frames of bees to winter successfully. 
This year the bees quit brooding up for lack of pollen and we were left 
with 3-5 frames of old bees in many cases. In a cold winter those small 
clusters are usually found dead in an area empty of honey with heads in 
cells with a
 *hive full of stored honey*.

After three decades of wintering bees (most of the time) in Missouri I can 
quickly tell by looking if a hive will winter. In my opinion stored honey 
is only one pert of the wintering scenario. Hive venting to prevent 
moisture is important as well as disease free and a good queen *WITH YOUNG 
WINTER BEES*.

A close friend which runs around 4500 hives says you need four brood cycles 
before winter to get a strong hive ready to split in April.

Two brood cycles minimum.

Russian bees and survivor bees do not winter well in my area without my 
help for the most part because they want to winter on too small a cluster. 
If they get a strong fall flow then they raise the required (in my opinion) 
young bees to winter. Left alone they winter on too small a cluster for our 
climate. Even the Russian bees are getting pollen patties (real pollen) and 
a light syrup this year.

I hate to clean deadouts (waste of my time and energy and sign of poor 
beekeeping) and try to take all winter loses in fall. I reduce down to the 
number of hives I think will winter and split back to the number of hives 
in spring I think I can without losing honey production.

Unless I need a certain amount of hives for a certain reason I always 
follow the above rule. 

What race of bees do you use in Serbia and how do you prepare for severe 
winter? Do you top vent? How does your friend know for sure his bees feed 
winter bees different than summer bees?

Sincerely,
Bob Harrison
Odessa, Missouri

 



 

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