Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Spring 2018 Bee Update

Bees made it through the Winter in perfectly.

Trying flyback splits on the hives. Hives are 2 8 frame deeps. Both hives full of bees.

Theory is put the old queen in the old location on new foundation. Move the old hive (queenless) into a new location close to the old location. Foragers will fly out of the new location and return after foraging to the old location. Many of these will revert to nurse bees and wax builders. The person I got this from (Laurie Miller) says that this is her preferred type of split. The bees in the new hives with the old queen will 'catch a gear' as she says and really put on the new wax as the queen has no place to lay until they do. Queens will even start to lay better (fuller) patterns

Old location will have lots of nurse bees and resources to raise new queens.

I have a hell of a time finding the queens. Yesterday I put a deep on the bottom with just foundation and shook all the bees I could off the frames into the new deep, Then put an excluder on the new deep and reassembled the hive on top. Bees should come up to cover the brood.

Left the whole setup over night. Today I will move the older brood boxes to a new location a few feet away. One last check in the new box (old location) to see if it's got the queen (bees clustered in the new deep). I'll put feeders on the new hives. I'll let the old hives (new location) requeen.

Maples out in full bloom in my location and an epic weather for the next week (80s).

Fingers crossed.

I have mentioned before that I am really intrigued by bees,but don't know squat about them.
I see your from Or.so the winters may not be as bad here,(maybe),what is done with the bees in cold temps?

pardon the ignorance(or laziness to google)

In your part of the country I don't think they do too much other than making sure they have enough food to make it through the winter. Some also will insulate and wrap the outside of the hives with tar paper. Up in Canada some have special sheds to move the hives into that are kept cold (but not as cold as outside) and dark all winter. Most everyone across the country will treat for mites to make sure that going into winter that the bees are as healthy as possible.

Out here we've got to worry about moisture and starvation. So I put what's called a candy board on top. It is about a 2 inch thick block of granulated sugar that was moistened and then dried out to harden. That provides emergency food (in those cases where its a long wet Spring) and it will absorb moisture (condensation) in the hive.

Bees raise a special type of bee int he fall that has a bunch more fat. These bees will live all winter, whereas a regular Spring/Summer bee will only live a few weeks.

Thanks,
I think I kinda mis spoke as to winters,I would assume ours are worse.

Oh they're worse. As cold as I've ever been is trying to start a rental car outside Burlington Vermont and I've slept on the snow on a tarp at close to 0F. That said you probably don;t have 6 weeks straight of not seeing the sun every Winter.