Midwinter Bee Maintenance

I maintain my one top-bar hive "au natural", meaning that I don't spray for mites or fungus, and I don't give them antibiotics or take their honey away and feed them sugar water throughout the winter. This is my first winter with bees, so the learning curve is pretty steep, but we're getting there.

During the super cold snap we had in December (where it got into single digits overnight and rarely jumped above 25 during the day) I wrapped the hive with some tarping to trap a little more heat for the girls, and I used an entrance reducer to keep in more of their heat. Well, since then I've left both of those winterization bits in place, but the weather has warmed up significantly, to the point where it's been over 50 in the daytime and we haven't had a frost since that cold snap. (Seriously, an entire month with no frost. Weird weather patterns. But that'll be the next post.)

Went out to check on the girls last week, and noticed that not only were the bees out foraging, they were bringing back saddlebags full of yellow pollen from somewhere. I haven't seen a single blooming flower around here, not even my pieris or hellebore is blooming, but the bees are better at finding food than I am at spotting flowers. My guess is perhaps they found a nearby house or houses with primroses or pansies, but maybe there's something else blooming. At any rate, they seemed pretty vigorous.

Went back out yesterday to check on them, and noticed that the front of the hive was smeared with streaks of something. As I contemplated it, I realized what it was: bee poo. The girls have a mild case of dysentery (no, not the human kind, just the bee kind.) Oh dear.

Dysentery in bees isn't all that uncommon in the winter, and it isn't usually fatal by itself. In extreme cases, the bees get so weakened they fall prey to other diseases or parasites and the hive dies, or they get so much waste material piled up in the hive that they have a hard time cleaning it. It is often caused by Nosema, a single-celled, gut-invading organism. Hives can survive a Nosema outbreak if they're otherwise healthy and strong, but it can be treated with antibiotics as well.

Dysentery can also be caused by the simple conditions of winter weather for bees. If they are feeding on honey with a high proportion of non-digestible material, their guts become laden with waste matter. Usually they take care of that with a "voiding flight", where they fly out and do their business away from the hive. If the weather is below 50 for an extended period, or extremely rainy and windy as it was the past week or so for us, they can't get out for that voiding flight, and eventually they end up having to void in the hive, or just outside on the front of the hive. Given that my hive's case seems pretty mild so far, I suspect that's the problem, rather than a major Nosema infestation, though things can change quickly so I'll just have to keep an eye on it. Apparently hive conditions can also cause issues, especially lack of ventilation and moisture buildup. I noticed a few weeks ago that they were having condensation issues on the inside of the viewing window, so I know the ventilation is pretty low.

Turns out, one of the reasons commercial beekeepers feed their hives sugar water in the winter is to help prevent dysentery. Sugar water, though almost completely lacking in nutritional value, also has almost no non-digestible matter. Bees eating sugar water don't build up waste matter in their guts, and therefore don't have to void inside or outside the hive. I think that's probably penny-wise and pound-foolish, though. Imagine if you were on a "clear liquid" diet where all you were allowed to injest was lemon-lime soda or energy drinks. Sure, you'd have energy, you'd probably continue to function, but you wouldn't be getting any nutrition. Your muscles would atrophy from lack of protein, you would start to suffer from lack of vitamins and trace minerals, and your immune system would be damped down. Similar situation with the bees; honey is a complex food full of enzymes and nutrients, whereas processed sugar isn't. They still have energy, they are getting calories to sustain themselves, but they're not getting actual food. I can't imagine bees would have evolved over millions of years to not be able to digest their own winter food, so I am going to continue to let them eat it and deal with the bathroom breaks as they can.

Jacqueline Freeman, who lives at Friendly Haven Rise Farm and teaches holistic beekeeping classes, also recommended that I give them a weak tea made of nettles, horsetail, and/or chamomile plus some of their own honey and offer it back to them in a dish with moss on top (to prevent drowning). Between that and removing the rain tarp and opening up the entrance reducer to increase ventilation, hopefully I can stop the problem before it gets worse.