Great advice. We have had a warm winter in Oklahoma overall. Late freezes this past two weeks. My hives have gone through 8-10 lbs of sugar. Normally that would last to nectar flow in April. Not this year. Added some more today. Thanks for the video.
Most of my two-deep hives are >150 lbs heading into winter. Some colonies ramp up early, some clusters stay in the center of the hive and don’t eat the outside frames, some are monsters that keep a massive population. If you don’t supplemental feed in my area you will have some dead-outs from starvation. Also, i haven’t seen any evidence that feeding sugar during the winter harms colony health. All my hives seem fine. All 9 of my hives I went into the winter with are alive as of today and the hives that took down more sugar last year didn’t struggle in spring/summer.
Great advice. We have had a warm winter in Oklahoma overall. Late freezes this past two weeks. My hives have gone through 8-10 lbs of sugar. Normally that would last to nectar flow in April. Not this year. Added some more today. Thanks for the video.
I met my wife in Tulsa! Nothing but good memories of Oklahoma.
Do you know what works even better? Leave them their honey, the part that they need to survive. The bees become unhealthy if you feed them sugar.
Most of my two-deep hives are >150 lbs heading into winter. Some colonies ramp up early, some clusters stay in the center of the hive and don’t eat the outside frames, some are monsters that keep a massive population. If you don’t supplemental feed in my area you will have some dead-outs from starvation.
Also, i haven’t seen any evidence that feeding sugar during the winter harms colony health. All my hives seem fine. All 9 of my hives I went into the winter with are alive as of today and the hives that took down more sugar last year didn’t struggle in spring/summer.
Yeah, there is NO evidence that sucrose is bad for bees. “Leaving bees alone”, results in dead bees.