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Thursday, October 26, 2017

FEEDING TIME IS OVER

If you have been watching the downtrend in daily temperatures you know that the fall feeding time is over.  The bees will be in their cluster for warmth about 18 or more hours per day now.  While they are in cluster the air is also cooling down any feed your may be offering them.  Even if the day time temperature is rising above or close to 57F and the bees appear to be active the temperature of any liquid feed on top of the hive is too cold. The bees will not take in cold feed because it will also cool their body and cause hypothermia.

So before the liquid feed freezes it would be wise to remove all feeders.  If the liquid freezes it may crack the feeder and dowse the bees with near freezing liquid.  This would in all likelihood kill your bees.

If you are concerned the hive doesn't have sufficient food for the winter you can add emergency feed as described in an earlier post.

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