A beekeeper in Kentucky wants to know if tapping on the winter hive is really as dangerous as her mentor claims. She writes: [My mentor] came over last Sunday to help me with a winter checklist. While we were standing there, I leaned down and tapped on the hive to hear the bees inside. This […] Read more
Vince Poulin, a beekeeper in Vancouver, British Columbia, sent me an idea he had for feeding nucs that were stacked one atop another during the winter. This is a problem I’ve wondered about but never actually solved. It’s nice to be able to stack nucs or small colonies with a double-screen board (Snelgrove board) so […] Read more
Here is a quick reminder about the amount of food a winter colony can burn through. Contrary to logic, your colony will eat more during a warm, balmy winter than it will during a colder one. On warm days, honey bees will leave the hive and fly around looking for food, but flying is extremely […] Read more
Back in October, Vince Poulin of British Columbia sent us pictures of a feeder frame he designed for feeding nucs that were stacked one atop the other for winter. I thought it was a creative idea that solved a problem with stacked colonies—they can be hard to feed without much disruption. As a follow-up, Vince […] Read more
Every few years we raise a new crop of beekeepers who want to feed bananas to their bees as a winter supplement. The forums are filled with anecdotal stories of bees thriving on ripe bananas while overcoming every imaginable pathogen and parasite. A recent Instagram posting explained that the potassium in bananas will help the […] Read more
Is it true that honey bees will store dry pollen substitute but not pollen patties? Is it possible to overfeed pollen in the fall? To answer the first question, picture a bee’s anatomy. The entire organism—front to back and top to bottom—is designed to collect pollen as dust. In the field, electrostatic charges accumulate on […] Read more
As beekeepers, we tend to underestimate the importance of winter bees. We are especially unconcerned late in August, just when the colony is on the brink of producing these winter wonders. On a sultry August afternoon when the cat is long and the air is too hot to move, the next brew may seem more […] Read more
