Feeding time

[1of6]

Brian,
     I didn't realize until I looked today just how vastly different our locations were.  From what I found it looks like your general area ranges from near sea-level up to around 220ft above sea level, and humidity levels a lot higher than ours.  Temps seem to be a little higher on average, but I didn't find a good 'longterm/historical' temperature record for your area.  Looks like you're directly effected by that Pacific North-West flow as well, which I'm sure brings you a pretty varied set of temps throughout the winter.  I can't imagine that you don't have some serious cold whipped your way in off the Pacific, but I also imagine that you have more pronounced temperature fluctuations thoughout the year as well.
     We are at 2000ft elevation (zip code 15938 if you want to compare weather) and I suspect that we get the same cold/lows that you get.  We occasionally see wind chills of -15F, but I can remember lower.  I'm sure our humidity levels are nowhere comparable to yours.  I think our temps may stay consistently lower than yours, but I'm not 100% sure of that.  We have seen couple-month spells where the bees are clustered tight and don't leave, and for that fact don't move very far across the comb.
     During these times of not being able to break cluster, I find my biggest worry about folks in my area putting the feed above the inner cover.  It just seems like for those with clusters in the corners or at the edges of the box, the inner cover would form a very effective barrier between the bees and the feed.  I've always looked at the advantage provided by top of the cluster being able to move up into the sugar pile, and with the inner cover on, I don't see that being able to happen in cases where the cluster is in a corner.  Perhaps this is only a problem for smaller colonies who have situated themselves in a corner and experience long spells of cold weather where they can't break cluster or move very far.  I know that I have been very satisfied with the amount that can be fed in a 'pile', as well as the bees ability to cluster into the sugar.  In terms of a ceiling, the dome produced in the sugar pile does provide this to some extent, with allowance for ventilation at whichever edge of the box the sugar is not piled out to.  I worry that in situations where the sugar is above the inner cover, the bees must be able to leave the cluster to be able to go up above the inner cover, unless the cluster is right at the center, and even then, the amount of sugar that they can reach without leaving the cluster is somewhat limited. 
     The same might be applicable for fondant feeding, but I haven't tried that yet so I have yet to see this in practice for my area.  I hear that there's an old fellar (just kidding) up in Lewisberry PA that feeds fondant, but I haven't seen his operation yet.
     Maybe the differences in how these work for our areas hinge off differences in weather, or maybe it's just purely management differences.  Again, I could be worrying about things that are inconsequential, but it seems like an inner cover could end up as a trap if used this way in my area.  I'll still listen, but I do have that worry in the back of my mind.  I do hear you about the size of the feeder area and have been thinking about this since last year, and have switched to shallows where possible for this.
     Sorry for the book, but hopefully you can see my reasoning for my reservations.  I'll definitely watch mine this year and see 'how far out toward the edges' they move, and this might be an early indicator (minus the wooden barrier) of how well this would go in my area.  For hives with big clusters, I think it could possibly work, but the ones that I'm feeding this year are not so big.  We'll see...I'm still trying to keep an open mind, but I've just got a lot of local factors (or what I believe to be) that I'm still hung up on.  It's worked so well for me with the empty feeder directly above the cluster that I'm just really having a hard time envisioning the change.

     Uh-oh, am I getting old and set in my ways?   :lol:

     Happy Holidays!  Brian - how about some pictures of your PNW winter out there??  We'd love to see some.

[Kathyp]

your temps are probably more like mine.  try Sandy, OR and see.

i have no problem with them coming up and getting the sugar if they need it.  consider:  they don't break cluster to eat in extrem cold anyway.  when it warms enough to need food, they will travel all over the hive to bring it back to the cluster...including the inner cover, if that's where food is.

[Michael Bush]

They will get better access to sugar on top of paper as they can chew through and the cluster is in contact with the sugar instead of having to go up and around to the sugar.

[1of6]

...One question, do the bees prefer this granulated or the syrup? I am assuming that you feed this method due to winter time temps.

As for preference, it's always going to be syrup, but that's trumped by true nectar as well.  Your last sentence does spell out the need for different feeding techniques during the winter.  Trying to feed syrup in the winter creates a host of problems in all but the warmest locations.  Granulated sugar and fondant both get you around many of these problems, and each has its own host of benefits that offset a portion of the drawbacks. 

If all has gone well though, and if enough stores are present going into winter to make it through, you should never have to so worry about emergeny feeding other than having the knowledge in your management arsenal.

[Brian D. Bray]

Happy Holidays!  Brian - how about some pictures of your PNW winter out there??  We'd love to see some.

I'll say it again, when it comes to getting pictures off a camera and onto a computer, I'm a dunce, when it comes to getting pictures from the computer to the internet I'm a bigger dunce.  Heck, it took me 2 years just to figure out how to use the "Quote" and "Modify" buttons on the upper right corners of our postings.  I'll leave the pics to Poka-bee and Oldenglish.

Where I'm at (152ft asl*) the topography of the island runs from 0 asl to 1394 asl, most of the San Juan Islands run in that catagory as they are volcanic lava domes.  I get a lot of interesting weather because of the varying wind currents that can come down off the Frazier River in BC (where Cindi lives) which we call a NorthEaster, to northerly winds down the Strait of St. George between Vancouver Island and the BC Mainand, westerly winds through the Strait of San Juan De Fuca, and southerly winds up from lower Puget Sound.  We also occasionally get Chinook winds from Eastern Washington that sweep down through the mountain passes from Eastern Washington (In California they get the same type of winds they call Santa Anna winds that come down through the mountains from the Deserts of Nevada and Eastern California).  I actually live northeast of Victoria on Vancouver Island, the capital of BC.

As for feeding bees, I agree that when feeding granulated sugar it should be as close as possible to the cluster location which is why, when my daughter did it, I had her pour the sugar onto an 8X11 sheet of paper laid atop the frames.  5lbs feed both hives, but in feeding she found out they had plenty of stores so I fully expect to find the sugar still there when I start to feed in February.

*asl=above sea level

[Shawn]

Well since it got into the 60s today I decided I would feed some syrup. I opened the hive and saw the bees were not even touching the sugar I had put in there from a month ago without the super on. I tried to look into the frames, without pulling them out, and saw some capped cells, honey cells. Letting the worries get to me I took the super off, put the paper back down and just thined out the sugar, put the inner cover on, and sealed it back up. The bees went straight for the syrup.