Subject: What's Your Plan Bee For Winter? [S.Hemisphere]

Plan Bee Until August

Beekeeping Skills Upgrade during Winter in Midrand

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What Happens in Winter

Worker bees collect usually close up entrances with propolis trellises or propolis doors and...

drones get kicked out of the hive
laying slows down each month
pollen gets stacked as bee bread
ripe nectar gets capped for winter

Most beekeepers scrape propolis off their hive tools, curse its stickiness,

and toss it aside without a second thought. KEEP IT! It's swarm lure!

The bees need at least the honey in their brood chamber to survive the winter. Don't harvest that.

Where beekeepers manage apiaries in colder regions, bees may require feeding regularly or you leave a super chamber behind for them to feed off.

Strong colonies can be combined with weak ones using the newspaper method: take the weak colony and add the brood chamber on the strong colony's brood chamber with a sheet of newspaper between them.

Poke some holes in it with a toothpick. The bees eat away the newspaper over the next couple of days and by then they smell the same..

One of the queens will survive.

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That time of year when most flowers are no longer blooming. There's less and less food to forage for

You have a choice: wind down the apiary or move the bees to a winter forage site.

Things like eucalyptus and lemon orchards carry on flowering during our winter months but are few and far between.

Certain crops may also flower over winter like blueberries.

Feeding sugar water is usually the go-to solution if your colony does not have enough honey stored this season.

There are also some cases to make for using insulation.

Where temperatures go below zero degrees for sustained periods, it can have a harsh impact on the bees - especially if they are not that strong or have low food stores

You can provide insulation by covering the outside of the hive or by using an empty super chamber and placing old newspaper or pillows inside it.