Winter Solstice is when the days begin to get longer and the queen ramps up egg laying. With the new mouths to feed, don't let your hives starve.
""The winter solstice is a celestial milestone, marking the shortest day and longest night of the year. In 2024, the winter solstice occurs on Saturday, December 21 at 4:20 a.m. ET in the Northern Hemisphere.""
Will they start laying up here in my territory too?
Sometime shortly after the solstice they will lay a bit even in cold climates. Here, Nebraska, they often do just a little patch of brood right after Christmas or so and then take a break from brood rearing for a week or two and then do a bigger patch. They often have a lot of stores before they start to rear brood, but they go through a frame of honey or more, depending on how cold it is and how much they have to burn for heat, for every frame of brood they rear. They also burn up a frame of pollen. During brood rearing the center of the cluster has to be 93 F. When just clustering but not rearing brood it's often just 70 F or less. So brood rearing is expensive to the bees in honey, effort, pollen etc. As Iddee says, they can burn up a lot of stores really quickly when you thought they had plenty.
And how do you know they're rearing brood, are you opening the hives up in that cold weather? I ordered myself an IR camera for Christmas and look forward to playing with it.
I lift the hive an inch or two, front and back, each time I go into the bee yard, year round. That way I know how many stores each hive has, and if one or more needs fed.
More importantly it's a great time to kill mites. In my area I check stores in late March.
Quote from: iddee on December 17, 2024, 07:10:57 AM
I lift the hive an inch or two, front and back, each time I go into the bee yard, year round. That way I know how many stores each hive has, and if one or more needs fed.
I have mine perched so I can lift the rear of it but I don't do it very often. Lifting it every day does sound like a good idea though, so I could get familiar with how it feels. The front, OTOH, I tend to stay away from that territory.
""The front, OTOH, I tend to stay away from that territory."" :cheesy: :cheesy:
I do Apitherapy for my joints, so I don't have a problem with stings, although I have never been stung from hefting the front to determine feed needs.
I've never been stung hefting either. I usually heft every week, definitely at least every two weeks, after the solstice, depending on how heavy people feel, the weather, and whether I'm feeding or not. Any hive that is easily liftable with my fingertips gets emergency food, because I'm pretty weak, so if it's liftable, it's light! Also, if you have screened bottom boards, you will sometimes see an increase in darker fallen wax all in one spot that can indicate a round of hatching brood.
This is a new program that can help beekeepers make decisions on when to treat.
https://agriculture.auburn.edu/research/enpp/bee-lab/winter-capped-brood-monitoring/
Good to know. I plan on putting in some fondant tomorrow to feed them.
>And how do you know they're rearing brood, are you opening the hives up in that cold weather?
Generally I don't, but I have in the past so I can learn. I also have had an observation hive in my house for years and you can watch it there as it happens.