Stores

[Bsummitkeeper]

I know everyone manages differently but I thought I'd throw out where I'm at right now in hopes that it will help someone save a hive. I run double deeps and ensure that they go into winter packed with honey by feeding 2:1 heavy until they stop taking it in early November. In early January I used news paper and added about 3 pounds of granulated sugar over the top brood box of each hive.

I went into 6 hives Saturday and they were all in about the same shape. All had a large amount of bees in both boxes but the bottom boxes had 0 stores, which is expected. The top boxes had an average of all had 3-4 frames with mixed capped brood, larva and eggs and all but 1 had almost no stores. My queens are definitely laying and with no nectar flowing I'm about convinced I was on the way to stressing or starving some bees.

I reversed boxes on all hives and have fed an average of 2 gallons of 1:1 to each hive this week. Just wanted to throw it out there in case anyone's on a similar path. It would be terrible to get them this far after a tough winter and lose them a month before the tulip poplar helps us out.

[herbcoop]

If it were me I'd keep giving the sugar water until they start bringing in their own netar, I've been reading a lot of beekeepers are just now loosing their bees to starvation... Crazy winter we've had.
The Nuc I just set up into a 10 frame hive body this past Sunday have pretty much eaten up 4 large sugar bricks I set in with them from checking yesterday so I added a jar entry feeder of sugar water as well.