Today was another gloriously warm February day topping out at about 61F. And while the sap was not flowing much at all from the maples or black walnuts, the producers of another sweet treat were hard at work.
The bees were again flying in and out of both hives, taking advantage of the warm weather. I was even surprised when I went to collect eggs and I found quite a few bees congregating in the chicken feed! I hadn’t seen them do this yet, and upon further research it could mean a couple of things – either the bees are in dire straits and seeking out unusual protein sources (rather than pollen), or they could be starting to produce brood if there is unusually warm weather in the winter when there are no pollen sources.
I decided to take a peek at the hives and simply from a peek through the inner cover, they both appear to be packed with bees. So my guess is that they are starting to produce brood. While in the hives, I added some additional sugar up top to help absorb moisture and provide emergency food for them.
As an important note regarding feeding bees – you should only feed them plain white granulated sugar. Brown sugar, molasses, etc. has been cooked and the chemical composition was altered in the process. The bees cannot digest the new chemical compounds and it will cause dysentery.
It is also important to never feed sugar to your bees when you have honey supers on (as in the ones you intend to collect honey from). If you make this mistake, you can end up with ‘funny honey’ that is honey made from granulated sugar instead of concentrated nectar as it should be.
Many of the spring bulbs are starting to poke through so the bees may have access to pollen and nectar soon. Early spring can be a challenging time for bees and beekeepers. It’s easy to assume the colony is fine if they’ve survived the worst part of the winter, but since the warm up comes before the flowers bloom, there is still plenty of time for things to go wrong.
I will be hitting my 1 year beekeeping anniversary next month and I know I still have a *LOT* to learn. It’s easy to second guess myself and honestly it took some nerve to post the pictures of me getting into the hives today because what if I’m doing it all wrong? But I am doing the best I can, learning and researching along the way – and I’m looking forward to sharing the journey with all of you!