Winter bees

[Newbee]

I know that the queen will produce a longer living Winter bee that will see her and the colony through to Spring, but I'm unclear when this will happen. I'm currently treating my two colonies with Apiguard and will then feed them for the winter. I assume that the feeding will stimulate the production of winters bees, but clearly there is a balance to be struck between space for the queen to lay and space for the bees to store their winter food. My question for more experienced beekeepers, is whether this balance occurs naturally, or if I have to play a more active part until the queen has produced winters bees and (I assume) stops laying and the space can then be used for food. Any advice, hints or tips would be much appreciated, as I don't want to disrupt what will happen naturally, but also don't want to fail my colonies by not doing something important at a critical time!

Thanks,

Newbee

[Patrick]

Hi Newbee

Sounds like you have got it spot on to me. The so-called winter bees develop in autumn and carry much larger fat bodies with a substance called Vitellogenin which enables them to have a much longer lifespan to last the winter and feed larvae despite lower pollen availability. So-called summer bees may work themselves to death in a matter of weeks.

It is suggested that varroa may limit the lifespan of winter bees so the order of summer priority is once you taken the honey off, is do they need a boost to their stores to tide them over? Then treat for varroa, then feed for winter.

Personally I am happy to feed some syrup earlier and have them use that to raise brood and then feed later on to provide winter stores.

I had several colonies come out of winter quite poorly this year with the cold period and snow in the Spring. I suspect that was caused by winter bees inevitably dying off combined with a fresh pollen shortage and lack of foraging weather opportunities and also the flying bees to do it. They were not short of carbohydrate but protein may have been a very different matter. It all came good with the heat but if it had been a wet summer it could have been a very different matter.

I have not fed pollen supplements in the past as locally we have plenty of willow etc but I am becoming increasingly interested in the impacts of pollen dearth’s on colony build up as our countryside becomes ever less floral and abundant pollen is restricted to a much narrower range of plants.