Winter Feeding Check — Home Sweet Bees

Wait, what? Why are the bees now on the other side of the hive! (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Winter Feeding Check

Normally it takes a colony about 50-70 lbs of honey to make it through a typical mid-Missouri winter.

Our weather, however, is anything but typical any more. For the past three years, we’ve had longer falls and springs and barely cold winters. A nice change for those who don’t like cold but bad news for bees. When temperatures are 50F plus they are out looking for flowers amid a desolate winter landscape.

This past year, my colonies had extra honey on all hives so I left it for them. I thought if we have another mild winter, they are going to need the extra food supplies since there will be nothing in nature.

Sure enough, when Christmas was 70F and I was checking - not inspecting - my colonies, they had worked through most of their honey supplies. Time to give them supplemental sugar cakes to help them make it through winter.

Now sugar cakes cannot feed bees full time, it just supplements them until they can find new flowers and food sources in nature. When temperatures are record warm, it also gives colonies a chance to move stored honey to areas in the hive where they can better reach it. The challenge is that temperatures can get cold very fast, leaving them separated from honey sources. That’s where the supplemental sugar cakes comes in handy, it gives them food until they can find their own.

As I opened this particular colony, I was struck by the location of the bees, on the right, and the placement of the supplemental sugar cake, on the left. When I added the sugar cakes, it was right over where the bees were clustered.

Seeing the bees had moved to the right told me they must have baby bees now. If worker bees have to decide between keeping brood warm or eating, they will die of starvation to keep the baby bees warm.

Another winter storm was heading our way so I moved the white sugar cake over the cluster. I also added a second supplemental sugar cake with pollen so the bees will have a source of protein.