Keeping Your Bees Alive in January and February

Keeping your bees alive.

We get hundreds of calls every Spring with folks telling us they opened their hive to find a pile of dead bees.

“Hey Petric’s I opened my hive and found my bees dead”

Us: When is the last time you checked your beehives?

“Closed them up in November and haven’t opened them or checked on them at all before now”

Did you treat your bees for the dreaded varroa mite? Did you bees have feed? These are the questions you want to ask yourself. If you treated for mites and left food they should be fine right?

Not necessarily! Depending on the size of the colony and the warmer winter weather, they could have gone through a lot more food. Check your bee hives even in cold weather. You don’t need to open your beehive to check if it has food.

Go out to your beehives and lift them or tip them slightly. Are they heavy? Are they light? If they are heavy, they probably have food. If they are light, you need to consider feeding right away.

Whether your beehives are heavy or not, we recommend feeding just to be safe. Better safe than sorry!

Winter Feeding: Keeping your bees alive

Keeping your bees alive. Get a 4 of 5 pound bag of sugar and dump it into a rectangle baking pan. Add 8 ounces of water and seven drops of lemongrass oil, and 5 drops of tea tree oil. Mix good and spread across the pan. Let it set for several hours. This should create a nice sugar cake that you can add to the top of your hive.

You can add a shallow empty box to put the sugar cake in or your could place it directly on top of the frames as long as it doesn’t interfere with your lid closing properly.

Taking these steps should allow your bees the extra needed boost to get them through the rest of the winter and into spring. If your bees are really eating a lot just repeat the above steps.

If for some reason, disaster strikes and you lose your bees Petric’s Bees and Honey can help replenish your hives. Go here and check out the many options we have for you!

If you are looking to grow and add more bees or beehives to your operation, let us supply you! Keep an eye out for more great tips and tricks from Petric’s Bees and Honey. When you are looking for high quality bees, look no further than Petric’s Bees! petricbees.com/sale order your bees, beehives, 4 frame nucs, 5 frame nucs, and kits today!