February Feeding Experiment

Winter here has been particularly mild. While that's great for driving my children everywhere they need to go, it's not necessarily a good thing for my bees. Warmer weather means they're more active than they usually would be, which means they are eating through their honey stores more quickly. In January I placed a strip of newspaper directly on the brood frames and sprinkled on a half cup of granulated sugar to feed them. They have polished that right off, so I am trying something slightly more substantial for them. I got the idea from Jon's Beekeeping Notebook about putting a heavy sugar syrup in ziplock bags placed right on the frames, with little slits that theoretically don't leak. The bees can sip right out of the slits. I made a heavy 2:1 sugar:water syrup and put it in two quart-size bags. From there, things got a little adventurous!

My bees were very active yesterday when I did this. You can see the migratory lid on my hive has warped a bit to create an additional entrance on the front right corner. An additional entrance isnt' necessarily a bad thing, but I am worried about water getting inside and worried about more entrances my bees have to defend in case nasty hornets come along looking to pillage and plunder. I have ordered a new telescoping top that will fit right down over the top box.

I quickly discovered this wasn't going to be a 30-second operation of lifting the lid, depositing the bags, creating a couple of slits, and then retreating. Nope. Once I lifted the lid I quickly realized the baggies were too fat for the space. Not only that, when I tried to make the slits I discovered the blade on my knife was duller than a baseball bat and wouldn't cut. By the time I did get a slit made, it was too big and leaked syrup. Not only that, the bees were starting to get a little defensive because silly me thought I could do this without my smoker. Argh!

Thankfully I had my protective gear on. I retrieved a honey super emptied of its frames to act as a spacer between baggies and lid, as well as my smoker. Still can't keep the darn thing lit, but I kept it lit enough to settle the girls down. I re-positioned the baggy with the Frankenstein slit in it so hopefully it won't leak, but will still allow fluid to be drawn out and added the other baggy sporting a smaller slit.

And now we're looking dandy. At least from the outside. I'll have to wait several days before I can go back in and check on things because the weather has abruptly turned colder through the weekend. Behind the hive to the left you can see a cinder block poking out that will hold my Carniolan hive once the girls arrive in April. I'm so excited!

Oh. And I got my official beekeeper license!! Yay!