I'm a little late to the party but I came across this animation from National Geographic today about where honey bees are transported to do pollination across the country. Very impressive!
The overall article is about building a "super bee". Make sure to click the "featured article" link at the top to read more.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/building-bees/transport-map
On the home front there isn't too much going on. I put a "Winter Bee Kind" candy board that I received for Christmas on my Cutout hive. The cluster was at the top of the hive and they were moving around slightly in the 30 degree temps. I also put a home made, no cook candy board on the Nuc hive but I could not see the cluster in the top box and didn't have a light to shine down into the bottom box to see them. Since I left honey supers on the other two hives I am not adding candy boards to them. I continue to see new dead bees on the landing boards of the hives so that is a good sign. If there were no alive bees inside the hive, then there wouldn't bee any dead bees brought outside the hive!
My BroodMinder's continue to monitor and collect data from the hives. I had the battery die on two of them so far and I've replaced one of the batteries but haven't put the BroodMinder back out on the hive. The producers continue to work through the issues and make progress on the software so that is a good thing! They are starting work on a similar device that is a hive scale. That would be super useful! If it is anywhere close to the price of the BroodMinder then I'll be all over it!
Happy New Year readers!
Showing posts with label Candy Board. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Candy Board. Show all posts
Thursday, January 7, 2016
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Winter Bees: 2013-12-12
Winter for a Michigan beekeeper can be the most stressful time of year. Specifically because there usually isn't much you can do once you've tucked them in for the cold season. All the work for Winter prep is hopefully done before the snow flies!
Most people that I talk to tend to think that bees hibernate for the Winter. Not true, they cluster together into a ball of bees and use the honey they have stored in the hive as their food/energy source to generate heat. They start in the bottom box and eat their way up into the top box by the end of Winter. So, if you open the hive on a warm day in January and the bees are at the top of the hive already, you are in trouble. I wanted to do one final inspection in the Fall to determine the honey stores in the hive but I never got around to it. As an emergency measure, you can put sugar in the hive so they can have something to eat. Last year, I used the "mountain camp" method to put sugar into the hive. Basically I removed some frames, put down some newspaper and dumped sugar on it. It worked well but I came across plans for a candy board http://www.beverlybees.com and it seemed like a really good way of putting the sugar over the cluster. With a small hole drilled into the side it also provides additional ventilation to the hive as well as an upper entrance in case the bottom gets snowed in. It was easy to make the box and some 1/2" hardware cloth stapled to the bottom and it was built!
Another nice thing is this sugar required no cooking. I put 12 pounds of sugar, 3 cups of water and a tablespoon of vinegar into my beer brewing kettle and stirred it up. This makes a paste like consistency that you spread into the candy board.
You place a block of wood in front of the ventilation hole/upper entrance so the sugar doesn't plug it up. After spreading the sugar out, I let it dry for about a week before placing it on the hive.
Once the candy board was in place I put mouse guards on the front entrance, some wind breaks up to help cut down the North and West winds and placed some pieces of styrofoam insulation over the outer cover.
Now for the hardest part of all..............waiting until Spring!
Thanks for reading
Most people that I talk to tend to think that bees hibernate for the Winter. Not true, they cluster together into a ball of bees and use the honey they have stored in the hive as their food/energy source to generate heat. They start in the bottom box and eat their way up into the top box by the end of Winter. So, if you open the hive on a warm day in January and the bees are at the top of the hive already, you are in trouble. I wanted to do one final inspection in the Fall to determine the honey stores in the hive but I never got around to it. As an emergency measure, you can put sugar in the hive so they can have something to eat. Last year, I used the "mountain camp" method to put sugar into the hive. Basically I removed some frames, put down some newspaper and dumped sugar on it. It worked well but I came across plans for a candy board http://www.beverlybees.com and it seemed like a really good way of putting the sugar over the cluster. With a small hole drilled into the side it also provides additional ventilation to the hive as well as an upper entrance in case the bottom gets snowed in. It was easy to make the box and some 1/2" hardware cloth stapled to the bottom and it was built!
Another nice thing is this sugar required no cooking. I put 12 pounds of sugar, 3 cups of water and a tablespoon of vinegar into my beer brewing kettle and stirred it up. This makes a paste like consistency that you spread into the candy board.
You place a block of wood in front of the ventilation hole/upper entrance so the sugar doesn't plug it up. After spreading the sugar out, I let it dry for about a week before placing it on the hive.
Once the candy board was in place I put mouse guards on the front entrance, some wind breaks up to help cut down the North and West winds and placed some pieces of styrofoam insulation over the outer cover.
Now for the hardest part of all..............waiting until Spring!
Thanks for reading
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)