"So,.....How are the bees?"

Its the second most common question I've been asked this last week.....
Thankfully it comes after "How are you?".....
...to which I'm only too relieved to answer,
"Bit tired, looking forward to the Christmas break..and you?"

So back to the bees,  How are they?

Well seemingly very much OK, thanks.....from what I can see from outside....which isn't much....

There's not a lot to see is there?

Bees don't fly much below 11'c and the temperature here has been consistently around 7 - 10'c for a good couple of weeks now....unlike last year around now...

Most people assume honey bees hibernate.  They don't.

As the temperature drops they huddle together in what bee keepers call a cluster.  The queen is in the centre keeping warm and the colony has the simple objective of keeping her warm and alive through to spring time.

It used to be thought that bees clustered like the penguins on the ice, everyone spending some time at the edge then working their way back in to get warm again.  Here's a bit of video.  They stay clustered and warm, only occasionally leaving the hive to poop, called a "cleansing flight" in bee keeper speak, for the whole winter.

The invention of thermal imaging cameras has improved our understanding of what goes on in the hive massively.  We now know that some bees become "super heaters", deliberately dislocating their wings, crawling into a cell and "shivering" their big shoulder muscles to generate heat to warm their sisters....

All that shivering requires a lot of energy...which is where a large store of honey comes in handy. Predicting how much honey your bees need to get through the winter and not harvesting too much for your own pleasurable consumption is a challenge faced by bee keepers every year. 

I took as much as I felt I could, which wasn't really all that much.  And compensated the bees by feeding them sugar syrup whilst the weather was still warm enough for them to reduce the water and convert it to "honey".  But just in case that isn't enough I've decided to give them some fondant sugar.....

Yes- its the kind you cover wedding cakes with, and slabs of it can be pounded and rolled into large "cakes" to fit into the top of the hive.  (Wrapped loosely in clingfilm to stop them drying up too quickly)

I took advantage of a break in the damp and grizzly weather, and in a rare patch of bright-ish sun, with a few brave (or desperate! - see above) bees flying...

 

Popped the roofs off the hives and added a slab of fondant....

 

I was rather relieved to not see a whole lot going on on the tops of the frames. Bees naturally store food "upstairs" in the top of the hive so this rather suggests that they have enough food "downstairs" in the hive where they are clustering.

So they've had their Christmas sugary treat and can continue clustering into the New Year.