The "li winter" in the twenty-four solar terms is coming, and then it is officially winter. The subsequent temperature will gradually decrease, and today I will share with you a few points of attention to the management of bee colonies during the low temperature period, you can understand it.
1. Be careful not to overheat.
The bee colony itself has a certain ability to resist the cold, will take different measures according to the different external temperature, if the artificial insulation of the bee colony excessively, it will cause the bee colony to mistakenly think that the external temperature is suitable, and they have gone out to collect. The cold resistance of a single bee is much lower than that of a group of bees, and once the bees go out to collect, the outside temperature is too low at this time, which will cause the bees to freeze and die directly outside the box or near the honey source.
Therefore, the heat preservation should be appropriate, and it is generally recommended that when the external temperature is above 0 ° C, only take measures to close the small nest door, close the ventilation opening, fill the gap in the hive, and cover the thick covering; when the external temperature is lower than 0 ° C, add a set of warmers to the hive or move into the cellar.
2. Be aware that the colony has sufficient feed.
As the saying goes, "there are no frozen bees, only hungry bees", when the bee colony resists the cold, it relies on the consumption of honey to produce heat to resist, so only by keeping the internal food storage of the bee colony sufficient can we safely survive the low temperature period.
In the low temperature period, in addition to several sources of honey powder that open in late autumn and early winter, most areas will enter a state of lack of honey, and if the external temperature is too low, lower than the temperature at which a single bee can resist and go out to collect, then the bee colony cannot use these bee sources, and the bee colony will also fall into a state of lack of honey, at this time we will have to artificially subsidize feeding.
3. Pay attention to the status of the food you are feeding.
Feeding during low temperatures is generally aimed at feeding enough to store grain for the winter, so it is fed with high concentration sugar water. High concentration of sugar water also means that it is saturated or supersaturated solution, that is, it is easier to precipitate sugar blocks, coupled with low outside temperatures, it is easier to promote sugar water to precipitate sugar blocks, bees can not directly use sugar blocks, you need to collect water to dissolve sugar blocks, but it is not convenient to collect water during low temperatures, so if we find that there are sugar blocks in the feeding box during the feeding process, we need to take them out in time.
There are also some conditional bee friends who are distressed by the bee colony, will directly join the honey spleen stored earlier, the honey stored in the honey spleen is also easy to crystallize at low temperatures, it is recommended to artificially heat up before feeding to melt off the crystalline honey storage, and cut off the cap, and then add to the bee colony, which is convenient for bees to eat and use.
4. Take care to keep the bees far more numerous than the spleen.
Low temperature period often has the characteristics of large temperature difference between day and night, generally about 10 ° C difference between morning and evening, when the morning and evening also have the possibility of a difference of more than 15 ° C, at this time to avoid the bee colony that is still in the stage of breeding bees laying eggs on the side spleen when the temperature is high during the day, the cold when the temperature is cooled down at night, the eggs on the side spleen are frozen to death, and the bees continue to lay eggs after the dead bee eggs are removed during the day, forming a vicious circle and wasting valuable labor.
Moreover, the climate in the past two years has been volatile, there is a cold wave at any time, and the average temperature may have dropped by more than 10 ° C, which is easy to cause the side spleen bees to be frozen to death and wasted. It is better to keep the bees far more than the spleen, focus on nurturing the bees in your heart, and the bees are slow but better than stable and high-quality.
Article source: Dr. Bee APP