Sunday, February 15, 2009

One Quart in One Week

The girls sucked down a whole quart of their own honey in a week's time. We have a couple frames of honey in the freezer that we'll put on in the spring. For now, we took the empty bottle off and added a bottle of sugar water (2 parts sugar to 1 part water). We'll probably use a 1:1 ratio next time. The bees have moved up in the hive over the winter, so they are clustered directly below the feeder now. You can see bees sitting on top of the frames in the picture below.
Here's the new sugar water with a few bees who leaked out the top. We took a stick and relocated them towards the front of the hive so they could go back home. No bee suit, smoker or fancy gear for this operation. Just a quick change of bottles and a little bee relocation.

We put the old honey jar in front of the hive for the last couple hitchhikers to go back in the entrance. Which they did.

I like the holes on these new caps. Smaller holes and more of them. Obviously a happy size for the bees, since they went through the honey so quickly. I can hardly wait for it to get warmer to peek in the hive. At this point, just trying to keep the girls from starving...the single largest threat this time of year.
POLLEN POSTSCRIPT: On warmer days there are bees flying into the hive with pollen on their legs...providing some protein that the queen will need for producing spring brood (babies). A couple trees are providing pollen right now...willows for one. Soon the maple trees will provide a huge burst of pollen.

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