Ok so I couldn't wait till spring. Had to check. I was worried about amount of food they might have too. I made a two inch spacer and used house screen to cover half the spacer, Going to put ten pounds of sugar in the hive. I went down to the hive and since it is cold figured the bees would be sleeping or dormant or something. Took off the outer cover, saw quite a few bees under the hole in the inner cover. Ya know with it being cold I didn't need my vail right? Well I took off the inner cover and the bees seemed fine. I didn't pull any frames but looks like maybe six capped frames still in the top deep, probably not much if any in the bottom deep and most of the bees well all that I could see were in the top. Quit mobile too. I put the spacer on and started pouring the sugar on it. Bees didn't like that and about fifty came up to tell me so!!! Didn't get stung and not sure why, a lot of head bunting though. I put the sugar on, put the inner cover and top cover back on and used duct tape to seal up the seams and they won't be able to do it with there sticky stuff. Now I guess I wait till spring? Keeping my fingers crossed. This is my first hive and is a swarm that decided to make residence at my place last may.
I put a out door remote thermometer in one of my hives. This a great learning tool every day, a couple time a day. I walk to the kitchen wall an note the temp in the hive. Here in Pa they seem to let the temp drop to 38 degs overnight,But then about 1:00pm each day they push the temp up to 58 or 60 degs even when its 20 degs and windy.So you can see it might be cold outside but there not that cold inside the hive.
Yeah they had me fooled, I didn't think they would come up after me when I opened it up. Looks good to me though, not sure if they needed the sugar but it made me feel better.
That was too cold to do what you did. Hopefully you didn't kill off the hive by dropping the temperature that much.
I do similar things when needed, they should be fine with only a brief amount of disruption, opening the top,pouring sugar, etc. Better to disrupt them a little to add sugar than to let them starve!
They sure get feisty when they are clustered! I had to take a queen excluder out one time when it was in the 40's, and even all suited up...hoo boy!...they were hotter than I've ever seen my bees! They are so angry and focused, but then again they've only got a few seconds to do their worst before the wing muscles stop working in the cold!
Rick
I was checking out the remaining food on my hives on Sat (50 F. overcast) and got stung right on top of the head. Didn't hurt much though. I guess when I'm wearing a jacket anyway a veil wouldn't require too much effort. For some reason I just didn't expect them to be defensive at all. Now I know better.