The hives survived the winter!

Temperatures got to 56 today, so we had a mini hive inspection. The hive 1 has the cluster up in the top box, hive 2 seems to still be in the bottom box. Neither has touched the candy boards. Lots of honey still in the boxes, we may have been very conservative in not taking any from them last fall but better safe than sorry. We did not lift the super off; we will probably wait for 60 to do a full inspection. Happy times in bee land!

Candy boards and winter

These candy boards full of sugar (36 cups sugar, 3 cups water in each) will go on top of the hives, under the inner cover. Bees can get thru wax paper to the sugar, and the upper entrance.

The upper entrance hole drilled into the candy board frame provides a vent to release humidity from the hive. Cold does not kill bees but the wet will, moisture must be released from the hive before it condenses. Another technique for a top vent is to shim one end of the inner cover higher than the other and leaving a gap. The gap is shielded by the telescoping cover, and the slant will help any condensation to run down to one side instead of dripping down on the frames and bees. If you drill a hole in the top box, you have to deal with the hole if you reverse your boxes in the spring. One other way to create a top vent/ entrance is to notch the edge of your inner cover.

Bees do very well with top entrances, and many feral colonies have top entrances, but the bees are really just adapting to the space. The top entrance has advantages of not getting blocked by snow, grass, or dead bees the way a bottom entrance can.

It will be 70 Monday, we will install the Boardman feeders as there are no nectar sources (already had a good freeze.) We plan to get one last good inspection, and prep the hives for the colder days immediately following. We will remove the top feeder box from hive 2 and install candy boards on both. Candy boards are made from old chicken coop door.

We have had the entrance reducers on both during the cold spell of the last few weeks, with hardware cloth over the hole as a mouse guard. Dead drones are all over near the entrance; mouse guard doesn't seem to be a choke point for mortician bees.