I am in a little dilemma....last year I chose to feed my bees in January and February sugar water. The temps dipped down into the 30's at night the three times I did. The next day on two of the hives I had bees everywhere. Dead bees that is. The other hive died two days later. Needless to say that I am a little skittish about going at it again. My hives seem stronger this year and I have been feeding sugar water as long as the temps don't get below 40. Now....I want to start to feed pollen in two weeks. I don't plan on having any trouble with that :-\. But I know when I give the pollen I will need to make sure to keep some sugar water going??? Right??? Our two coldest months are ahead. What if I feed the pollen and the queen kicks into laying and it cold spells on me and I can't feed for a couple of days or weeks??? What course of action do any of the beeks in the Carolinas take this time of year???
Pollen stores and honey stores are 2 different things. True, both are necessary for balanced nutrition in a bees diet, but the use quantity between the 2 is very lopsided. Bees will use more pollen during brood rearing.
A hive of bees can survive a winter with 10 deep frames of honey and 1-2 frames of mostly pollen (bee bread)with a medium sized cluster (2-3 lbs). In the spring when pollen sources begin (willow, alder (birch), crocus, etc) to bloom the bees will harvest mostly pollen and using the excess stores of honey in the hive start enlarging the brood chamber expotentially.
If you plan on feeding pollen or pollen substitutes in January, you may be in a situation that the cranked up brood production, so early, can over power the hive and place into an internal dearth situation if the bees can't get out and fly. In otherwords, you may cause an increase in the bee population to the point the bees don't have enough stores, even with feeding to survive a late or extended cold snap. this happened to me last spring. Our winter (Washington state) lasted into May, I had bees I was feeding starve because they had put so much of their resources into producing brood that they didn't have enough to keep the adult bees alive. I salvaged 2 hives (I found only 2 queens) out of 5 by combining frames of bees andnursing the rest of the year. They resorted to eating the any brood still in the white. Almost every cell had a bee dead, bottom up, in it, even the brood cells where that way. This happened in a week, when I was unable to attended the hives due to health problems.
Finding 5-7 lbs of dead bees in a hive where there were only 2 lbs a few weeks earlier was very disheartening.
The other down side is that the more green (unprocessed) food stores there is in a hive the more likely such things as Dysentery, Nosema, etc, can occur.
You can feed both pollen and syrup but I think that anywhere except southern Florida makes January too early. Late January would be better and still build up enough to take good use of early flows.
Timing can be critical and sometimes too soon is as bad as too late.
why do you want to feed? if you feel that your stores are to light, my choice would be to go with a candy board or dry sugar to get them through. moisten the sugar with a spray bottle if your weather is dry. if you are trying to stimulate early brood it is way to early. all you'll do is put unneeded stress on stores and the colony. depending on your weather, mid to late February is usually early enough. for me, late February to mid march if the weather warms at all.
check with local beekeepers. they will be able to help you with area specifics...of someone on here who is in your neighborhood. remember that if you feed syrup and they try to store it, you will be introducing a great deal of moisture into the hive.
The "local" beek that I favor starts in mid January. I like the February approach myself but seeing how weak the hives I had that made it through the winter this past year were by the time the flow started was not good. I didn't get much honey and it took all summer to get them built up. Now I just want to do what will give me the best chance at getting some honey. i love the bees and beekeeping but my wife is ready for a return investment if you know what I mean :evil: :evil: Anyway. the temps here are in the 60's for two days and upper 50's for the next. I will be feeding sugar water to them the next three days. Once I get her into laying it takes three weeks for them to come out. So I need to be thinking 3 weeks ahead....I hope.
QuoteThe temps dipped down into the 30's at night the three times I did. The next day on two of the hives I had bees everywhere. Dead bees that is. The other hive died two days later.
Why did they die? Was there too much moisture (humidity)? What kind of feeders? Jugs, top feeders? Did the syrup drain down on them? Did the syrup freeze? I am not quite sure what happend.
I use top feeders that have the opening running horizontal to the frames. Instead of using mesh as a ladder for the bees, I put cork board with the edges beveled, in to cover the syrup. It helps to keep the syrup warm from the heat of the hive, and the bees are able to climb on to the cork to reach the syrup. I then make sure the lid to the hive has a vent routed into it to allow humidity to escape out the top.
I hope this might help.