First off, I forgot to wish my readers HAPPY NEW YEAR! I wish you all have a wonderful and prosperous year with your bees. Remember, you cannot go back and correct what is done and past. However, from this point on you can improve on your time, beekeeping practices, and attitude. So that leads up to the reason for this post.

I have lost all but six colonies. I cannot change that, but I can improve on the numbers by feeding my bees that I have now and getting them through the Winter. I am making plans to strengthen them to the point that I can split in March and April. I am not looking for a honey crop this year. If I do have any it will be a plus.

I have 1 hive at one place that the bees have ample stored honey and pollen. I really don’t have to do anything to that one as it has survived for 5 years with me doing nothing but pulling honey and thinning the congestion down so they wont swarm. Even at that, they grow so fast that I have had 3 swarms year before last within a 3 month period.

The other 5 hives are in an apiary that I am feeding Peppermint candy, slop method. Let me explain.

Instead of feeding each colony  separately, I have two barrels of candy that I put up several years ago, but had forgotten about. During the course of time, the rains came and puddled the lids and finally Mother Nature let the rust take place. The lids developed holes so the rain could get inside. Water and candy will mix and since I was negligent, the candy water has  fermented. A side note here. Fermentation does strange things to humans when they consume enough. The same thing happens to the bees. This is really not a good thing.

However, my thought is that the bees will only get out when it is warmer than 50 degrees. So as long as the temperature stays lower than that, the bees will eat what they have inside. In the Spring, Bee Spring - January, February,and March, the bees will be consuming more and more stored honey so they can raise babies (larvae) for the Spring honey flow. They, on a warm day, will go to the candy syrup to collect, to them, nectar so they can continue to raise babies and make caps for the nursery cells. By all rights, they will be too busy to collect very much to put up for honey.

About February 15th, I will be putting on supers that have just foundation. The bees will have to start making wax for new comb. I will close off the barrels with new lids forcing the bees to start using the little candy syrup that they did store up. They will have used up most or all of the syrup by the time the honey flow starts. The wax will have negligible peppermint in it as the production of new wax will have processed the peppermint out of their systems. Even if the peppermint is in the wax, it will remain in the first super that stays with the hive. I always leave the first super on the hive for the bees. All supers above the first super are mine to do with what I want.

By the time the bees use up the majority of the stored syrup, the honey flow will have commenced. The forgers will have started collecting pollen and nectar from the flowers and will not taint the honey for sale. This is the same principal we use for the corn syrup that we use for Winter feed. When the house bees get the first super about half drawn out, I will then put on one or two more supers of drawn out combs so they can start putting up nectar without having to build a lot of comb. This will help them store more nectar for honey production.

At this time I need to explain something else. If you don’t have last years wax comb, then naturally you will have to put on foundation. Remember, it take about 8-9 lbs of honey to make 1 lb of wax. So I am not expecting too much honey for me this year.

I am also going to split as soon as I can so I can start expanding my colonies. I will either divide my existing colonies into two per colony, or I will work the bees as quick as I can to make splits from the splits as soon as they have 4-5 frames of brood in each hive. Right now I have to concentrate on my next two posts that I have started and not finished. See ya soon.