Today’s Run: 4 miles

It is that time of year.  Time to tuck the bees away for the Winter.

Winter is a dicey time to be a honey bee.  Especially in the South.  Up North, you feed them up and insulate the hives and close the door, so to speak.  Kinda like God closing the door on the ark.

Here in the South it is a little more problematic.  Honey bees will fly when it is 50-55 degrees Fahrenheit.  That weather is a large portion of our Winter.  “No problem!”, you say. Well, actually, yes problem.  The bees will fly but there is nothing in bloom on which they can forage.

You see, a honey bee will fly, on the average, of two miles trying to find flowers.  So, all Winter, they are flying two miles and coming back empty handed.  They are using up a lot of energy (think:  stored up honey) doing all that flying and depleting the excess stores.  That leaves nothing for the other bees to eat for the remainder of the season.

So, what does a bee keeper do?  You end up feeding the bees all Winter!  They need a 50/50 feed of cane sugar and water.  Kind of like humming bird feed. With the escalating price of sugar (and everything else for that matter) it gets a little expensive.

This Winter we are trying something new-for us new-not new for the industry new.  We have ordered “bee patties”.  These are like sheets of a molasses type substance that you lay on top of the inside of the hive.  It is a pretty powerful sweetening and the bees are really supposed to go for it.  Let’s hope so!  Bees are known to starve to death and or freeze to death trying to survive Winter’s challenges.  That really would be sad.