southwest mi. has anyone done a full inspection yet, have you started to feed? It's been cold and the only warm days are followed by nights in the high 30's or low 40's. yesterday was 80 and today high 40's. I'm afraid to get into the hive and disturb them if it's going to be this cold. I am also afraid to start feeding. what should I be doing? this is my remaining hive and it looks like it is going to be a monster judging by the activbity at the entrance yesterday.
RGY
Next time you get a day above 55 degrees I would recommend you take at least a quick peek. My hive very nearly starved to death a week ago. When I looked they only had about a third of a frame of honey left. You could try open feeding with some inverted jar feeders. This would tidy you over until it warms up.
Good luck
John.
I agree with John, take a good look on a sunny mild day.
The Maples just starting blooming at my place 2 days ago and my bees were bringing in loads of pollen during our one day heat wave. I decided to put some 1:1 syrup in my hives yesterday as a stimulus along with the pollen. It was too windy today to see if they are taking the syrup.
thanks. i did put out 4 frames of fall honey and they robbed that out last week. Have you, or are you going to, swap the hive bodies?
Yep, my bees were robbing some old honey frames too. They seemed to prefer that to the syrup so far. As for swapping hive bodies, I'm not going to because my bees are still in the bottom box. If the wind lets up, it looks like you should be able to take a peak tomorrow or Wednesday before we go back into March again!
Don't know about you, but I don't even have any dandelions yet. The poor things were bringing in bird seed weeks ago. And desperately searching my husbands planer shavings for any kind of food. Yes, feed! At least dump some dry sugar on the inner cover. They're starving at my place. I've been open feeding dry pollen and they're eating it up. They've also been taking pounds of dry sugar off the inner cover. I left them plenty of stores, but the warm spell weeks ago started brood rearing here and they've gone through most of it. I'm between Grand Rapids and Battle Creek, so I'm not sure of your weather, but it's so windy lately they can hardly fly but they've really been trying. I mixed up some polllen, brewers yeast and dry sugar and they're going nuts over it. They're sooooooooo hungry!! That booming hive won't be so booming if they starve. Hope you take the time to at least dump a little dry sugar in. Good luck!!
g