Stores
Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 6:29 pm
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.
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.