Winter Feeding

Well with night time temperatures approaching freezing it's too cold to feed the bees syrup so it's time to drop some  insulation and a block of fondant icing onto each hive, leave the bees to it and hope for the best. I popped the insulation on a few days ago and instead of making this years fondant decided to buy some ready made. Fondant is that heavy white icing you get on cakes. In theory you can buy it from local bakeries so I went out to get some. After visiting a few shops it became apparent that most high street bakeries don't actually do any baking onsite -bit of a con but that's the high street. I wound up buying some Dr Oetker branded fondant from a local Sainsbury's. Hope it's not got too much additives in it but the ingredients list looked a little longer than the three items I used to make the stuff last time.

Winter fodder for micro livestock

After pressing the fondant into some food boxes I drizzled a few drops of Vitafeed Gold on each block just for good measure, slipped on a veil and some gloves and went out to feed the bees. Upon opening up the feed hole in the Nucleus crown board I was overwhelmed by a lack of bees 8-O It was about 9 degrees Celsius at the time so I'd expected active bees to come streaming out as soon as I opened up. Looking into the hole I could see a few bees making their way up the comb face to see what was happening but not the numbers I'd been hoping for so I'm wondering if maybe they won't be surviving the winter.. I popped on the fondant block replaced the insulation and roof then after feeding the other hives I went back to the nuc and had a look under the fondant. I was pleased to see more bees had gone to it and were making a start on the fondant, but I suspect this little colony may be a bit touch and go.

When I opened Hive1 I got the reaction I was expecting. Lots of worker bees who were already under the feed hole came ambling out to see why some fool had opened it. I placed the fondant block on hoping not to squash any bees and replaced the insulation and the roof then moved onto Hive2. It took a few seconds before workers started investigating the opened feed hole but they got there. I'm thinking Hive1 seems to be the strongest at the moment which corresponds with the Bee Inspector's visual survey of the hives back in September.

Hive	Combs of Brood	Combs of Bees	Diseased Brood
Nucleus	2.5	5	0
Hive1	7	18	0
Hive2	6.5	13	0

Colony inspection from September 2012

A comb is one side of a frame so the 5 frame nucleus has a total of 10 combs and the main hives have 11 frames which is 22 combs apiece. As you can see the nuc was about half full of bees and a quarter full of brood. It's not entirely impossible that it's still about half full but the cluster is positioned towards one end of the nuc rather than directly below the feed hole. Afterall the nucleus is ventilated only by it's entrance rather then through the open mesh floor which I keep closed, so there be some reason to do with airflow affecting their position within the hive. At the time of inspection Hive1 was slightly more populous than Hive2 and going by response to my opening the feed hole that still seems to be the case. As I mentioned in a previous post Hive2 had had some Sacbrood but since physically removing the affected larvae it hadn't recurred by te time of the inspection.

I popped back outside with the stethoscope to give the colonies a listen. I'd expected the nuc to be noticeably quiter than the main hives but that wasn't the case as far as I could make out, fingers crossed for them. Next weekend I'll be looking under the roofs and insulation so see how quickly they're taking the fondant and depending on how fast it's going down I may feed them again this.

In a normal cold period the bees do very little but generate heat slowly consuming their stores. However we've had occassional warmer days so they've been going out to forage which uses more energy than just keeping the cluster warm would use. Unfortunately on those odd days there probably hasn't much if any nectar out there for the foragers to bring back so all that happens is the stores get depleted for no return.


As I've mentioned before wasp activity has been very limited and late in season this year. I have seen a couple round the hives and spotted a couple near the nuc entrance which moved me to put  a trap out but it didn't catch anything. On Monday I spotted a very large shiny wasp investigating my house wall.

Saxon Queen

Around here you tend to see German Wasps and Common Wasps but they both have a set of 4 yellow markings at the base of the thorax whilst this one had 2. After looking at far too many pictures of wasps and identification charts I've come to the conclusion she was a Saxon Wasp or Dolichovespula saxonica if you're so inclined. These are usually found further South, according to my know-it-all mate Google and whilst Saxon Wasps are a particularly large species the long abdomen on this one suggests to my entemologically untrained eye that she was a queen. Saxon wasp colonies die off every year with only the queen surviving so I'm guessing she's abandoned her sisters so to find a place to make a cocoon and hide out. I left her to it and I'm really hoping she's not going to surprise me with a nest under the bed in Spring.

Edit 9/11/12 Checked to see how the fondant's going down yesterday and it's barely been touched. You might think that sounds bad but it actually means the bees in the cluster have adequate food stores so they've not had to go looking for more food. I'll be leaving the fondant in place for them though just in case.