I still had to put out the bee candy on my backyard hives, and the weather was perfect for it. This early afternoon it was 43 when I started working with the hives. Cracking the cover, I saw the Brown hive and Green hive had appropriate looking winter clusters:
However the Pink hive didn't look the same:
I could see quite a few bees in between the frames; but I didn't want to disturb them. I am supposing that the bees have broken cluster due to the warmer temperature, and moved down in search of more food.
In any case, I added 2 pie plates of sugar candy to each hive (the same I added to Sutton). Here's what it looks like:
I gently (as much as possible) scoot the bees over and lay the candy right on top of the frames. You can see the (grey) shim which gives about 2" of space between the frame tops and the inner cover. I'll check them in about a month if we have a warm-ish day to see if I need to add more.
As mentioned, the temperature got up to 52 degrees later in the afternoon, according to the bee thermometer in my back yard:
With the temperature so warm, the bees were able to fly, and fly they did!
I was glad to see a good number of bees flying from the Pink hive, so maybe they were just lower in the box.
Since there are no flowers to get nectar from, the bees were mostly doing "cleansing flights." That's just a pleasant name for bees going out and going to the bathroom! And we had evidence of that - both of our cars were spotted with brown bee poop all over! It's good that they can do these flights, because during the winter the bees "hold it" and wait for warm weather, which can be months away. Not my idea of fun!
Had to use an online converter to get the temperature in celcius which is what I know. Its good for the bees, disease wise to get out. I think not cleansing aids in nosema or something similar. Where I live the bees can get out most of the days in winter and there are ofter a few flowers in the garden for them to play with too. Not gloating:)
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