Our two Langstroth hives seem heavy with honey, which means the bees should have plenty of food to get them through the winter. But this is our first winter of beekeeping and we’re not sure how heavy “heavy” should be. Furthermore, both of our honey bee colonies are clustering at the top of their hives, which can mean they’re running out of honey. I’m doubtful of that, but I’m also a generally paranoid novice beekeeper. So to play it safe, just to make sure they don’t starve to death before the spring, I decided to put some candy cakes in the hives. Welcome to Part 3 of The Candy Cake Trilogy: Placing Candy Cakes in the Hives. In Part 1 we introduced the recipe for our candy cakes (which also works for candy boards). Part 2 consisted of some photos and a video of us making the candy. And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…
…and now let me tell you how the whole thing went down.
Read on . . . »
Both of our honey bee colonies are clustering at the top of their hives, which can indicated they’re running low on honey. So, just to be safe, we’ve decided to cook up some candy to get them through the rest of the winter. Welcome to part 2 of The Candy Cake Trilogy: Making Candy Cakes. In part 1, The Recipe, we introduced the recipe that goes something like this: Boil 3 cups of water, gradually dissolve in 15 pounds of granulated, add some apple cider vinegar and pure vanilla extract (or spearmint or anise oil or another essential oil), let it get really hot, then let it cool and pour it into paper plates (or a candy board). Here’s a video of exactly how that worked out for us.
Here are the photos:
Read on . . . »
The bees are clustering at the top of hives now, so it’s time to give them some candy cakes. Welcome to the The Candy Cake Trilogy, Part 1: The Recipe.
The honey bees in our two Langstroth hives were wrapped for winter about two months ago. It hasn’t been much of a winter so far, wet and soggy with temperatures hovering around freezing (0°C). Only in the past week or two have we had any kind snow accumulation, as can be seen in this photo I took earlier today (yeah, I know, my little backyard looks like a junk yard; it gets that way this time of year). Anyhoo, it’s still a relatively light sprinkling of snow and it doesn’t get much colder than -5°C (41°F). Both hives seemed heavy the last time I lifted them about two weeks ago, so they should have plenty of honey to get them through the rest of the winter. I wasn’t planning on feeding the bees again until near the end of February — pollen patties and then sugar syrup a few weeks later. But the colonies in both hives are clustering at the top now (as far as I can tell from watching this video from last week). Clustering at the top of the hive can indicate they’re running low on honey. So, as usual, I’m not sure what’s going on. I checked them again earlier today, shining a flash light in the upper entrance again, and this is what I found:
Read on . . . »
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