Last week we had some very cold weather, with the chance of snow. Snowpocalypse, if you listened to the news. Right. We never saw any snow where I live, but it did get down considerably cold for a few days. I worried a bit about my smallest hive at that point, but there wasn’t much I could do in the way of opening up the hive, as it would chill them terribly; given how tiny a hive it is, I didn’t want to take the chance.
So this week rolls around, and the temperatures are up in the 50′s. In mid-January. Good grief. That’s warm enough the bees are stirring, stretching their wings, going for elimination flights (think “finally get to poo outside the hive for the first time in weeks”), cleaning the dead bees off their porches and out of the bottoms of the hives, and generally getting busy. The bad news is, it will also make them more active and in turn cause them to consume more of their stores of honey, because there are no flowers out now for them to eat.
Since I have that one hive which is really, really small (only one brood box, and even that wasn’t completely full before winter set in) and which I think has been the target of raiding, I decided that particular hive might need some TLC to get through the winter. While I’m not generally a proponent of feeding the bees, that’s because I prefer to leave them their own honey to eat rather than stealing their hard-earned natural food source and making them eat nutrient-void sugar water. In this case, the little tiny hive didn’t store much honey at all this year, and I’m somewhat concerned that they’ll run out before there are flowers for them to harvest. I’m also basically out of the honey I harvested this fall, and I have no easy way to feed something liquid back to them at this point anyway. So, I made them some Bee Candy (fondant patties) to give them, so I could place it inside the hive on top of the bars of the box they’re living in and hopefully get them some extra calories.
My experience making the bee candy was less than stellar. First off, I didn’t line the pan well enough, and then I didn’t let the syrup cool enough before I poured it into the pan, so it all ran around behind the waxed paper and made the paper completely pointless. Then it wouldn’t set up. Just. Would. Not. I poured some of it out onto parchment paper squares, thinking I’d put the thick blobby syrup-coated paper in the hive. Well, it was thick, but it oozed so far eventually it ran onto the counter a bit. But then it started to SET. It got crystalline, and when it was done, I had some cakes of sugar I could easily peel off the paper and take out to the hive. So…ultimately a success for my purposes, but not exactly what I’d deem the best way to do things!
Today I took one of the cakes of sugar out to the teeny hive. Given the low levels of activity, I just rolled up my shirtsleeves and tucked my hair into a cap, and had Todd help me open the hive. It’s a Warre hive, so first I checked the quilt and filling for moisture levels. The fir chips I’d put in there as insulation were fairly wet, but the quilt itself was dry, and the inside of the hive had no moisture on the walls at all, so yay! Gonna equip my one Langstroth hive with a similar quilt for moisture control in the spring, I think. After that, I peeped in at the bees. I was surprised, they were fairly industrious and building comb upward from the bottom box. (Not the best way to build comb, but at least I can tell they’ve been active instead of just laying in the hive dying or something. ) The comb I had put in there last fall to help feed them a little was nowhere in evidence *, though it was probably just disassembled and remade into that bottom-up, empty comb I saw. I put the sugar cake in next to the bits of comb they’d built, and closed the hive back up. I hope that by feeding them inside the hive like that they won’t be as prone to robbing anymore. Last year I made the thoughtless mistake of putting a piece of honeycomb on their porch. It had broken off when I was inspecting a hive, and I just put it next to their entrance. Not the wisest move. Pretty sure the other two nearby hives saw that as Open Season on the smallest hive.
I didn’t open up either of the other two Warre hives. They were both abuzz with activity and bees, and their porches were clean-swept, so I have no particular concerns about them and just left them alone. One of those was the hive I took the 3/4 full deep off of last fall, and they both have three boxes full to the top of comb, honey, brood, and bees. (Well, the brood and bees have retracted for winter, but they’re still pretty full!)
I did go over and peep at the Top Bar hive. Their activity level out front was rather low, but that’s attributable to a couple of things, after further examination. One, their winter cluster is in the very BACK of the hive this year, as I verified by opening up the observation window. And two, they’ve almost completely shut down their hive entrance with propolis, so that there’s literally about a 2″ gap for bees to enter and exit on the West side of the opening. I’m sure they’ve done that primarily because they get so much rain and weather coming in aimed at their front door that it helps keep the water out, but it also may help them with the yellow jackets and wasps that tend to frequent that side of the yard. And though having somewhat fewer bees than at their peak, they are still basically stuffed to the gills, and will likely swarm in spring if I don’t do a split.
I should go over and check on my Langstroth hive if I get a chance, too, but it’s 30 minutes away in my parents’ backyard. I have big plans for it this spring which will need to be put into action as soon as we are likely to only have days in the 40′s and 50′s. First part of it involves inserting entirely new, foundationless deeps under the two ancient crusty deeps, and then removing the top nasty brood box as they vacate it for the new stuff. Repeat to get rid of the second nasty brood box. Then if we have time I’ll add a queen excluder and a super. We’ll see. Mostly I’m concerned with rehabilitating their yucky neglected home more than I am with getting honey out of them this year!
BEE CANDY
- 2 cups sugar (I use organic sugar, which is evaporated cane juice)
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 Tbls corn syrup (not HFCS)
Put the ingredients in a saucepan, and bring to a boil while stirring. When all the sugar has dissolved and it boils, clip on a candy thermometer and cook without stirring to 235 degrees**. If you cook too long, you get caramel, so watch it. Allow to cool until it thickens and begins to turn white. Line a small loaf pan with waxed paper, pour into the loaf pan. Cut off a slice and feed to the bees by laying it on top of the bars/frames where they are balled up for the winter.
* I have been told by some keepers that “bees don’t recycle wax”. Well, apparently they do. I imagine that they prefer to build new stuff, especially when there is pollen and nectar to feed and sustain them, but they do reuse stuff. The hunks I put in this hive didn’t magically walk away. After a bit of research, I’ve found other keepers who say they’ve observed the same thing, bees recycling wax under certain circumstances. In this case, it was pristine and beautiful, freshly built honeycomb, and it was inserted into the hive at a time of year when frankly, they don’t have much else to do.
** I have also been told by some keepers that you can’t boil the sugar water for bees, because it will “caramelize and kill them.” I’ve seen it repeated, but never any explanation as to how or why. I can see the bees maybe not liking the burnt taste, but it’s still…sugar. And carbon. It doesn’t magically become something toxic by boiling it. Also, all the bee candy recipes I’ve seen call for boiling and achieving 230-245 degrees. I suspect an Old Wives Tale being passed around from keeper to keeper, here. If someone knows differently, I’d love to hear the explanation.
On a similar note, one keeper also said that Karo Syrup would kill the bees, but in the same breath said it was fine to use corn syrup. Um. Karo is a brand of corn syrup. I know, as I’m a cook and rather picky about my ingredients, and pay 4X as much for Karo as the store brand of “light corn syrup” *because* it’s corn syrup without HFCS. It does contain vanilla, but I find it unlikely that would harm bees. My guess is that person knows that HFCS isn’t good for bees, and is running off the old information from when Karo used to contain HFCS.