Waiting for Spring

It's that time of year when the bees hunker down and wait for spring. I'm right there with them.

Until I became a beekeeper, I never really thought about what bees did in the winter. I guess I assumed they died out or went underground.

The fact is that they huddle together like penguins in Antarctica flexing their wing muscles to generate the heat needed to keep the colony alive. These bees can live up to six months and have more body fat that their summer sisters.

The winter crew lives off of the honey stored by the summer workforce, moving upward through the stores as the winter progresses. If all goes well, they will have exhausted their reserves about the time the first blossoms appear in the spring.

To give them a little nutritive cushion, I will add candyboards -- blocks of hard sugar -- to the hives between now and March. That will help the smaller colonies make it all the way to spring, hopefully.