Feeding Time

Today was feeding day again and since it was so warm, we were able to get into the hives and check on everybody.  The bees like to keep the inside of the hive at about 95 degrees and we won't go poking around in them if it's 55 or below.  If  we did that, it would simply take them to long to get the temperature back up again.  In the winter they regulate the temp by forming themselves into a ball shape cluster that is constantly moving.  The energy created by their body movements produces heat.  They're such clever little creatures.

Now back to feeding.  Back on August 8, we tried the ziplock bag method, but by the time we got bags in each of the hives, we knew that we'd go back the feeders we'd been using.  Danny mixed up 20 gallons of sugar water and we put 1-2 gallons in each hive that had gotten low on their honey stores.  Two hives still had capped honey, which means they haven't had to get into their stores that they had at the end of summer.  One hive actually had new honey.  This means that they are healthy hive and have been able to get out on the warm winter days and forage.

A month ago, we ordered 15 hives that will be ready for pickup in April.  At that time we will have 29 hives if the 14 we have now survive the rest of the winter.  Today we found that we had lost one hive due to starvation.  When we looked in the main hive body, we found the bees dead and in the ball shape they use to keep warm.

Our hives are located next to a fence at the edge of our property.  Our next door neighbor has a number of cows and today several of them mosied over to check out what we were doing.