January - February
SPECIAL NOTE Red Maple is starting to bloom at my house in south east Huntsville, AL. The bees were covering the blooms up on Monday but the rain has them in the hive today (Tuesday 1/17). If we have favorable flying weather in the near time frame that should start spring brood build up. If this happens, keep a close watch on food stores because spring build up is a critical time for food as they have a lot of hungry mouths to feed. Keep an eye on your food stores from now until March.
1. Make sure any medication left in your hives is removed on time.
If you plan on medicating this spring,
have all medication out of your hives 4 weeks before putting honey supers on.
2. Check all of your hives for food stores and feed if necessary
A good way to
check is to “heft” you hives, which means to lift one side then the other. If
the hive feels light, you need to feed it. If you check the hives often enough,
you will become familiar with the weights that are in the normal range and with
those that are not. Comparing the weights of different hives is another good
way to determine the amount of stores. If you find a hive or two that’s
unusually light, you need to feed. A surplus of 60 pounds is a good goal.
Do not use Boardman Feeders (those that
fit in holders on the outside bottom board) in cold weather.
Bees cluster in cold weather and can not move outside the hive to get the food.
Boardman feeders are also notorious for causing robbing if the weather warms to
the point that the bees can fly.
To avoid this, use a feeder that is
inside the hive. Frame feeders are OK except you have to remove a frame to
put it in, you have to open the hive to see if it has feed and there is always
some drowning of the bees. Plus, they will build comb in it if you don’t take it
out during the honey flow.
Baggies will work, but they require an
un-reusable plastic bag and a feeder box to surround the bag above the brood.
Baggie feeders are best used over a queen excluder so that the bag can be moved
if need be without spilling liquid feed. I find it best to
place the empty plastic baggie inside a 2 lb coffee can. Then fill
the baggie inside the can to the top. Then remove he baggie
with syrup and place it on top of the queen excluder.
Probably, the best method is a feeder
in a hole of the inner cover. It delivers the feed right where the bees need
it and it is very unlikely to cause robbing. It can also be replaced
easily. You can use an empty box on top of the inner cover to protect the
feeder jar or you can stand bricks on end to space the outer cover above the
inner cover then place at least 3 bricks on top if that to prevent wind from
blowing the outer cover off.
If you checked
for stores recently – do it again and do it often.
I am finding that my bees are using their stores
rather rapidly this year.
For survival feeding; feed as strong a
mixture of sugar to water as you can. For brood stimulation feed a 50/50 mixture (by volume) of sugar to
water. If you opt to stimulate brood rearing, start feeding the weak mixture
around mid February in north Alabama and be prepared to make splits or hive
swarms. I find that 3 gallon of water mixed with 50 lbs
of sugar makes a saturated mix however in the cold winter weather the water
needs to be increased to 3 1/2 gallons of water to 50 lbs of sugar to prevent
the syrup from crystallizing in the jar if an external feeder jar is used.
If you opt to stimulate feed, consult
an experienced local knowledgeable beekeeper for advice. The goal of
stimulation feeding is to try and get large populations of worker bees at the
beginning of the bloom season. That is a noble goal but large volumes of bees
(crowding) appears to be a major factor in swarm production. Stimulation
feeding works very well if splits are planned and are made early enough.
It is a good idea to include
Fumidil-B or Fumigillin (same chemical but
easier to mix) in your feed syrup. In past years Fumidil-B was prescribed to
prevent Nosema apis. Nosema apis has not been a known real problem
in north Alabama due
primarily to our warm winters however we now have to be concerned about Nosema
ceranae.
I know of no
cases of Nosema
ceranae in Alabama but other parts of the US is reporting colony loses due to
Nosema ceranae.
3. Feed options:
There are several options for the type
of feed to use. You can use Fructose 55, which is very convenient, and
consists of 77% dissolved solids and 23% water, by weight. The solids are
Fructose 55%, Dextrose 40% and other sugars 5%. That means it has a combined
sugar/water ratio of over 3 to 1. If you want to use this in a 1 to 1 ratio to
stimulate brood rearing, you need to add four parts water to five parts Fructose
55 by volume. In other words, for every 5 gallons of Fructose55 you use, mix 4
gallons of water to achieve a sugar/water ratio of 1 to 1.
Another option is to simply use sugar.
Sugar is mainly Sucrose, not Fructose, thus the ash content is lower
which is good for confined bees.
Another option is to use honey. Old
honey, from dead hives or honey taken from a wax-melter is often used for bee
feed
(I prefer not to feed honey that has been heated to a high temperature as a wax melter might).
A problem with used or old honey is there may be
foulbrood spores or other disease in it that can infect the colony. If you know
the source of the honey and are confident it is not infected, it will make a
good feed for a weak hive. BUT USE WITH CAUTION!
4. Start getting ready for spring; it is just around the corner.
Get queens,
packages and or splits on order ASAP. Make sure you know who you are getting
splits from as this can be a way to gain diseases and beetles.
Place no orders for splits from any
supplier until you have verified the quality of the splits.
If in doubt, contact the regional
Alabama State Bee Inspector and ask if the source you are considering has been
inspected and passed or is certified. If they have not, don't buy the bees.
Since Alabama is a closed boarder
state, it is illegal to bring splits into Alabama from other states. This is a
good thing and may well be the reason that no known cases of Nosema ceranae
have been reported in Alabama to date.
Remove, render
or dispose of old black comb from frames that are not now in hives.
If you set up "bait hives" in the spring, you might consider saving any old dark
combs as the bees seem to prefer old dark combs. You may
need to treat old dark combs with
paradichlorobenzene (moth crystals). It has been my
experience that "well aired out" combs that have been treated with
paradichlorobenzene are very attractive to swarm scout bees as are the
paper combs left from rendering the beeswax out in a solar wax melter.
Check
your yard for “dead outs”.
Get them out of the yard now and clean them up ready for re-use.
Old, black comb
makes excellent fireplace starter material. Use it sparingly as a little goes
a long way. Also I have no idea if and to what degree it might add creosote to
your chimney.
Old black comb
is also very good to use in swarm traps and now is the time to get your swarm
traps in order for spring swarms.
5. Get old frames cleaned, wired and ready for foundation particularly for your swarm collection hives and new start colonies (hold off on installing foundation until as close as possible to actual need – the bees seem to like the fresh wax smell).
6. Get your order placed ASAP for new wood that will need to be painted.
Get the wood painted so the paint can cure before you install bees. (Hives and
related wood ware need not be painted on the inside, just the surface that
will be exposed to weather. It is a good idea to paint both sides of a
reversible bottom board and the wood on "wood framed" queen excluders).
If you are
using soft wood, it is best to dip (not soak) the corners (end grain) of all
surfaces exposed to the weather in Copper
Naphthenate (wood preserver) and let them
dry thoroughly before building. Make sure you use a wood preserver that can be
painted over. It has been my experience in the last few years that soaking
wood in
Copper Naphthenate will cause soft wood to absorb too much Copper
Naphthenate. The excess Copper Naphthenate will bleed through the paint when
exposed to summer heat. It appears the manufactures of Copper Naphthenate have
improved its ability to penetrating soft wood.
I find that soaking the corners of
"built supers" results in the Copper Naphthenate
(wood preserver) softening the glue. That's why I recommend
dipping
the corners, let them dry and then build.
If you use
cypress wood, Copper Naphthenate is not
required but can be used. You do not
really have to paint cypress but I recommend that you do.
7. Do not go into the hives at this time unless there is a compelling reason to do so.
8. To date this has been a very mild winter in north Alabama. Don’t worry about keeping your bees warm. Ventilation is far more important than keeping them warm.
END OF FILE
Last updated 1/17/12 brf
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