Winter Feeding, Round Two

The weather tipped into the forties and fifties again by the end of this week, awakening our honeybees from their warm cluster, offering the opportunity to clean out their hives, poop and search for food. Since it’s still February, there’s not much for the honeybees to feed on, and there’s always a chance that winter-like weather will return, so we checked in on their pollen patty levels, and supplement a few of the hive’s food source. This feeding will last a couple weeks, but we’ll have to feed again before winter’s over.

Unfortunately, since the last break in weather, we lost one hive. Larissa gathered the lost bees and will examine them under a microscope to try to determine why that colony didn’t survive. Larissa noted that there was a lot of bee diarrhea on the outside of that hive, so she’ll be checking for nosema apis or winter dysentery.