Are Your Bees Alive, Do You Need to Feed Them? Part 2

Do you remember the colonies that I fed back in January? I put granulated sugar atop one colony and icing in the drawn comb of another. The bees in the colony with the icing really took to it. Here is a picture of one of the frames that had the icing in it.



This is what one of the frames looked like before I put it into the colony when it had icing in it.



The other colony I fed with granulated sugar.



They didn't use hardly any of it. However that is a good thing about Carniolan bees. They are extremely frugal with winter stores and have a smaller winter cluster than other races of bees and will thereby also use less stores.



Both colonies were approximately the same strength when I gave them the feed. They also had about the same amount of stores available. It is quite clear to me that they prefer the icing over the granulated sugar although feeding granulated sugar can be a great way to keep your bees alive and should not be discounted.

The left over sugar has been removed and will be made into syrup shortly. Both of these colonies will be set up with some inverted jars with 1:1 to help with brood rearing.

The colony that had the sugar on it now has a pollen patty and an empty shallow of drawn comb. Hopefully when the shallow is full of brood around the first of April it can be taken off the deep hive body to start another colony with.