Last night after feeding the sheep I went to look at the beehives, Hive B, a small colony of bees from last year had lots of dead bees in the entrance I took the entrance reducer out, swept out the dead bees picked them up in two handfulls and put them in the compost. I took off the roof had a quick look all the bees were lethargic, quiet, loosing the fight, there was no more food, they ate it all, I blame the weather I mean I was still out with the sheep on the 26th of December so the bees just continued eating their stores. I took a couple of spoonfulls of honey slid it on the floor, when I went to check in the morning there were dead bees in it, so I took it away, lifted the roof turned the tray with honey upside down and closed it again.
When I opened it up again this afternoon they were much livelier, still dead bees about but at least not as many. Don’t forget we only had + 5 degrees, I made a 1:1 mix of syrup sprayed it into two frames and lifted the roof, tried to keep the cluster as together as possible and put the frames of syrup on each side of the cluster, they hummed probably angry as I disturbed them . We shall see tomorrow how well they did on the syrup. I have also orderd some sugar paste Apifonda and Bee Strong by Bee Vital. The paste I am going to split an equal part for all of them as I am worried as the weakes hive ate the reserves they might have all done the same thing and Bee STrong will be shared by all of them later on.
It was not a nice feeling picking up dead bees once again. lesson learned give them us much syrup in the winter as it is possible.
will keep you posted. M