The weather cooperated and I was able to swap the outer covers and give the bees the candy I made for them. Antheia had eaten almost all of the dry sugar and Hegemone barely touched hers. I’m guessing that Hegemone had more stores going in to winter. I didn’t smoke either hive because I was trying to cause the least amount of disruption to the hive. It also doesn’t seem like a smart move to trigger them to gorge on their dwindling stores. Antheia was very tame, but Hegemone netted me a string. It didn’t help that Hegemone managed to glue the inner cover to the outer cover so I completely opened the hive and exposed hundreds of bees that were feeding on the dry sugar.
The sugar definitely absorbed some moisture from the hive. The newspaper that was put under the dry sugar was soaked. The bees were less than thrilled when I tried to remove as much of it as possible. Antheia now has an entrance shim above the inner cover. Hegemone required a shim below the inner cover (in addition to the one above) because of the remaining dry sugar.
Shiny new covers for both hives
Antheia with the candy block in place
Hegemone with lots of bees eating the dry sugar
Antheia with the candy block above the inner cover
I have been wanting to experiment with making candy for the bees. There are several recipes available online, but I chose to follow Robo’s Emergency Feeding. I scaled down the recipe to 1/10th because I only have two hives and my electric stove burners probably couldn’t handle a much larger batch.
2.5 lbs sugar
4/5 cup water
1 4/5 tsp. vinegar
Bring the water and vinegar to a boil and mix in the sugar a little bit at a time. Continue to stir occasionally and let the temperature climb to 270F. Remove the pot from heat and wait for the sugar to stop boiling. Very carefully pour the molten candy in to the mold. I recommend using silicone bakeware to allow for easy cleaning and removing the hardened candy.
I took a short video when the sugar was boiling and almost at the right temperature.
Winter is in full swing and I checked up on the bees today. I slide open the bottom board’s tray and looked up in to each hive. Antheia was clustering at the bottom of the lower box. I couldn’t see the cluster in Hegemone, so I’m guessing that they were in the upper box. The weather forecast shows many more cold days and nights and the temperature should creep up above 50 on Friday. If the forecast holds true, then I’ll put bag feeder spacers on both of the hives and give them a lot more dry sugar. I’ll also get a chance to replace the falling apart outer covers with some new metallic topped ones that are a bit more weather proof.
I took advantage of Brushy Mountain Bee Farms December free shipping and ordered a lot of stuff to prepare for next year. Next year I plan on adding another hive and if the bees are strong enough, split a 5 frame nuc. I’m undecided about starting the 3rd hive from a nuc or a package. Still a little bit of time to make a decision on that. To prevent robbing and to make feeding easier for me, I purchased top feeder for all of the hives. I also bought screened tops to sit above the feeders to prevent robbing or having the bees fly at me when I refill the syrup.
As a beekeeper, there is not much to do when the weather is cold. I decided to branch out a little bit more and start tinkering with some of the various bee related crafts. I’m starting off with candle making. I ordered 10 pounds of beeswax, a votive mold and a few other essential tools of the trade. Candles and honey will probably be my gift of choice until I start making mead. If anyone know a good source of candle molds or some good mead recipes, let me know.
