What do puppies have in common with honeybees? More than you think! Neither hibernates in the winter. While everyone knows that honeybees store honey for winter, they often are confused about hibernation, with many people thinking the bees mostly sleep and then occasionally wake up and eat honey. Not true at all. Bees are diurnal and sleep at night, just like puppies. They stick their heads inside empty wax cells and sleep! Otherwise, during the day, they are awake and in winter, they form a tight cluster to maintain body heat. It is shocking how warm they are able to keep the hive: when we do a quick hive inspection in January, for instance, we can feel the heat rising as we lift the lid. And, as expected, the bees will look up at you, annoyed, if you lift the lid. We've had them fly directly at us, angry we're letting out all the heat! Even in January, we wear our veils as we've learned from past experience, they will sting in January when it's freezing, as readily as they will sting in July, if you upset them. Nothing upsets a bee more than letting out all the heat!!!
The hive typically stops raising baby bees by November, but the queen starts laying again in January, during the height of winter. A hive has to be 98 degrees inside in order to properly raise baby bees; any lower and the bees die, so it is a miracle of nature that a cold blooded animal is able to maintain this temperature inside the hive in the dead of winter. Honey is an excellent insulator, and that is also why the hive is such a unique invention. The bees eat the honey in the warm center of the hive and work their way outwards. Like most beekeepers in northern states, we leave 2 full boxes of honey for our bees so that they will have plenty of room to raise babies and lots to eat. We always put an emergency "candy brick" inside (a concoction of sugar, pollen, vinegar, and some other things), but bees won't eat it unless they have run out of food, and many winters our bees don't touch the brick at all. If anything, they will carry it outside, eating their honey but using the candy brick as moisture control. Sugar is hygroscopic, so moisture it attracted to it. Keeping the hive dry is critical to winter survival, as wet bees are cold bees, and we often see clumps of sugar just outside the doorway of the hive, left there by the bees cleaning their home! We also do "dry sugar" feedings, knowing the bees will either eat the sugar or use it for moisture control.
We're written about feeding sugar before, and this is a good time to review the difference between ethical and unethical use of sugar to supplement bees: ethical beekeepers will NOT feed syrup when there is a nectar flow prior to a honey harvest. If our bees have no nectar, we let them eat the honey they stored. This fall, for instance, the bees ate an entire box of honey (about 60 pounds) to survive the heavy rain we had during July-August, when nectar was washed out of the flowers. We did not feed, for obvious reasons. If the bees had no honey stored, we would feed dry sugar, or "candy bricks" , neither of which have any water. Syrup has sugar and water, and the bees will store that as "honey", but dry sugar or candy bricks are eaten only as food and not stored. Honey is dehydrated nectar, and the bees have no way to bring water into the hive, so dry sugar products, fed at any time, never make it into the honey. Feeding syrup in the fall is not necessarily for "food" purposes either since even uncured syrup is a good insulator that we can get rid of easily in spring by spinning those frames out. The dirty secret in beekeeping is that many beekeepers goose their honey yields by feeding nectar while there is a honey flow, and it's easy to triple yields using this trick. Ultimately it's not a good idea however, since sugar water has zero nutrients. It's the equivalent of feeding the bees donuts ie processed food. While okay if there is a starvation situation, it's not okay otherwise. We realize this is "in the weeds" stuff for the average consumer, but knowing how one's food is raised is important for consumer choice. We don't purchase 'other people's honey' anymore, unless we can confirm their practices. Say no to fake food.
Disclaimers: Blog posts are opinions, not advice. One thing all beekeepers will agree on, is that if you ask 10 beekeepers what to do, you'll get 13 different answers. Beekeeping is alchemy, nature, and a bit of magic.
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