The reason I started this blog was to record and/or solicit information. This information is to be used to help me manage a swarm hive that I captured in early July 2011 in NJ. The challenge is get the weak hive through the winter and into next spring so it can produce honey and provide pollenization services for local flower and vegetable gardens.
In spring of 2011, my apiary has just gone through a rough winter. I had 2 hives going into the winter. One hive expired in late Feb (starved) and the other made it through to the end of March when a late cold snap did them in (same fate). I realized that I had not done enough to ensure their survival though the winter and I vowed that I would never have another hive die on me due to my lack of knowledge or effort to ensure their survival.
I purchased hive-top feeders (2) from Mann Lake. I purchased 2 nucs and got the hives up and running in late April. All seemed to be going OK when in early July, I discovered that one of the hives had swarmed. My understanding was that early June was when to expect swarms. This swarm perched itself high in a tree (45 feet) in the air just above the Langstroth hives on the ground. The next day, the 2nd hive swarmed and again, in a nearby tree at about the same height. I attempted conventional methods of capture for several days but nothing worked. The first swarm moved on but the 2nd remained. Since the tree was small small and not growing straight to begin with, I cut it down and captured the swarm and got it into a Langstroth hive on July 15th. The hive had some drawn frames and the queen started laying brood within 5 days.
In early August, I treated the original 2 hives with Apiguard. I did not treat the swarm hive as I did not want to stress them. This was on the advise of some local club members. Seemed logical that the verroa life cycle had been interrupted with the re-location of the bees into the new hive.
The task was how to get the hive strong enough to get through the upcoming winter since they had missed the nectar flow. I got another hive-top feeder and started feeding them thin syrup. They continually took the thin syrup through September when I switched to heavy. I fed them as much as they would take and ended up using 150 pounds of sugar across the 3 hives. I continued to check the hives up until mid Nov. The two established hives seemed to have adequate stores (I did not harvest any honey off the 1st year colonies) but the swarm hive only had about 40 pounds of stores.
Today, I made some fondant candy to put in the swarm hive. While making the candy, I decided to start this bog to see if others may have ideas as to how I might get this hive through the winter, which up to this point; has been very mild in NJ.
If others have ideas/recommendations as to how I can get this hive to survive. Please feel feed to comment.
