My bees have been bringing in yellow pollen (when it’s not freezing cold and snowing like it was yesterday) for the past few weeks now. I don’t think they’ve been getting it from dandelions, but I don’t know one way or another. Today is the first time I saw a honey bee on a dandelion. I like to post this kind of info for my own records.
It has not been a warm spring so far.
A week ago today, I asked if Newfoundland has had its final snowstorm of the year. The answer is no. Here’s my sad little beeyard this morning.
Honey bee hives covered with snow. Again.#nlwx #beekeeping #NLbees pic.twitter.com/F0Lh5igwoE
— Mud Songs Beekeeping (@MudSongsBeek) April 27, 2016
Enough with the snow already.
The ragged queen I kept alive with a light bulb for two weeks. Caged four days ago and put in a new hive with new bees because most of the bees from her original starved-out colony were dead. How’s she doing? I would love to know.
I had hoped to lift up the top of the hive today to see if the queen is alive. Did the bees eat through the sugar plug and release the queen? Did they accept their new queen or did they kill her? Is she starved and dead in the cage? Is the cluster large enough to keep the queen warm? I do not know. The snow and the -16°C windchill (3°F) kind of put the brakes on my plans and the weather forecast calls for more of the same over the next two days. I’ll check on her as soon as I can, but man oh man, springtime in Newfoundland is brutal. Perfect timing on the snowstorm, Nature. Thanks a lot.
UPDATE (the next day): She’s dead. I’ll write a separate post soon to explain what happened and what I’ve learned from all this.
I found bee body parts scattered all over the snow near my hives today.
“Ah man, what the hell is this?” was my first reaction. It was a natural reaction considering the last time I saw bee body parts was inside one of my hives last February — when shrews preyed on most of my bees until they were dead.
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For me, the key to feeding bees emergency sugar in winter is to put the sugar in long before the bees need it (I do it in late November). It can be a gong show once the bees are hungry and clustering above the top bars, in which case these sugar bricks are pretty convenient.
I mixed the sugar bricks in Episode I and popped them out of the pan in Episode II. Now it’s time to slip them into the hives. There’s not much to see, but here it is:
If I do this again, I’ll make the bricks larger. Dry sugar on newspaper over the top bars is still my favourite method of feeding the bees in winter because a large amount of sugar dumped in all at once will keep the bees alive until spring and I won’t have to mess with them again. But I definitely appreciate the convenience of being able to slip the no-cook sugar bricks into the hives as a stopgap measure.
UPDATE (24 hours later): Well, the bees in at least one of the hives are eating the sugar brick.
MARCH 02, 2016: I use this same method to make sugar cakes in the Episode IV.
The first bit of snow to stay on the ground came down last night.
All the hives, in theory, have enough honey to get them through the winter. If they don’t, I have a rim on top to make room for dry sugar or whatever else I might need to feed them if I notice them clustering above the tops bars. I hope it’s a cold winter and I hope it stays cold. Cold is better than warm.
8:35am. Here’s what I see when I look out the window.
Yup. It’s still winter.
I hear that honey bees in the UK are starting to bring in pollen. Well, goody for them.
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