From our Association Chair, Austen Brown..

"We have recently had some sunny days, and whilst it has felt very pleasant in

the sunshine, the air temperature has not been so warm. So the first tip is not

to take out frames and go into the bee ‘cluster’ unless you absolutely have to.

Doing so may well result in the queen being rejected by the bees and the

colony being seriously set back if not dying completely.

It’s better to wait until late March or April for a couple of really warm days

before attempting any detailed inspection. At this stage it’s a good idea to

mark the queen (if required) and assess her brood. More on that next month

However that said, there is every good reason why you should be lifting up the

cover board and having a good peek down between the fames. So what are

you going to look for?:

1. Is the colony alive and how many frames of bees are there.

2. Can you see reasonable quantities of sealed stores on the frames.

If you fed heavily in the autumn, the bees may still be well down between the

fames. Having them at the top does not necessarily indicate a lack of stores,

but it might do, so check carefully. Heft the hive from the back to feel how

heavy it is. Light hives will require feeding because its another couple of

months until significant nectar is available and colonies without adequate

stores will be inhibited from rearing copious brood.

Feeding should now be with a light syrup (1lb to 1pt) and must be done by

contact (bucket type) feeder, and preferably placed directly on top of the

frames. Bees will not move over significant gaps to feed at this time of the

year.

Add insulation around and over the feeder. Old jumpers, sacking and even

polythene big bale silage wrap make good thermal insulators.

You may safely briefly lift the brood box aside and inspect the floor for detritus

and dead bees. Failure of the colony to remove the dead may not indicate best

colony health or perhaps that the entrance had become blocked with dead

bees!

It’s also worth checking how much heat you can feel when placing the back of

your hand against the cover board, before removing it. Warmth from the

brood is a sign that the colony is trying to build up numbers again for the

forthcoming season.

With very small colonies there may be little or no noticeable heat and quite

often these very small units do not have the ‘physical strength’ to get brood

rearing started. They may well be doomed as the older bees die and no new

replacements are forthcoming. At present there is not much which you can do

to save them, however I have noticed that some small Nucs which I took into

the autumn without great expectations of survival, have so far been looking

well in the polystyrene Nuc boxes into which I moved them earlier in the

winter. Big colonies will get through fine in ‘cold’ wooden hives but small

colonies struggle to keep up a ‘core ‘ temperature and the bees eventually

metabolically ’burn themselves out’.

Dampness and lack of food are the bees worst enemies in winter, so try to

ensure that yours are will sited with preferably a southerly outlook to enable

them to get out for cleansing flights.

Make sure that you take note of any excremental splattering across the frame

tops. This is a sign of dysentery which may be caused by Nosema disease or by

the bees consuming uncapped ferment stores.

Final thought: I have always noticed that the earlier I fed my bees in the

autumn, the better they came through the winter. I could never offer a logical

explanation for this, however in shifting the Nucs into poly boxes in the winter

I observed that much of the lower part of the frames were full of unsealed

stores. Bees are reluctant to seal over stores which they feel that they may use

imminently and this will be especially so for smaller colonies."