Why feed your bees in the winter?
Winter feeding honey bees may be necessary, depending on the climate where you live. Depending on how the bees did in storing enough honey/sugar syrup from the fall they may or may not have enough to make it through a long winter.
Late winter/early spring is when most hives will die of starvation. So it is a good idea to help them out before this happens. While some will swear to never feed the bees, natural bee keeping and all. For me, letting a good hive starve to death because of local weather or fauna problems is just plain dumb.
When to start winter feeding honey bees
Since it is a bad idea to go into the hive when temperatures are too low, you need to do a little planning to get this part right.
What I mean by this is a couple of things. First, you will need a rim or spacer on top of the hive body to allow for the winter feeding. Make sure it is in place before the cold weather sets in. Second, have your feed ordered or prepared so when mother nature gives you a break you can quickly place the feed into the hive.
Feed the bees before they need it, because they may need it when it is below freezing and blowing snow. Not a real good time to pop the top of the hive and let out all the accumulated heat the bees have produced. For me in the Midwest, this means the brief warmup that usually occurs in December.
What to feed
Sugar Brick (with recipe)
At this time in the year for most bee keepers, sugar syrup is a no go. Either too cold for the bees to take and process it or it freezes. The alternative is sugar bricks.
Sugar bricks are basically sugar with just enough water to hold it together. Placed on top of the frames where the moisture from the bees will condense on the hard sugar liquefying it just enough for the bees to eat it. I use the following recipe as opposed to just sugar and water. Sugar brick recipe The vinegar helps to keep the sugar from molding, the vitamins and electrolytes give the bees a boost, and a dab of lemon grass oil help attract the bees to it.
Pollen Substitute?
Hives use pollen in the raising of young bees. As you get into late winter, the bees will begin raising brood in anticipation of spring. The real balance on pollen patties is not giving it to the bees too early and having them raise brood they can not feed or keep warm because spring is late this year. It can definitely be a gamble. I have done it, but sparingly given only half a patty to each hive on or around our average last frost date. Here is where I get mine: pollen patties
How to feed
Basically you will take the sugar brick or pollen patty and place it on top center of the frames. The bees will move up over time and come in contact with the feed as winter is coming to a close. In order to have room for this, as mentioned before, you will need a shim or spacer on the hive. I built one out of 1X2 stock I had laying around.
I found this Bee Hive Feeder & Insulator Honey Bee Winter Cluster Box to be interesting, please comment below if you have ever used one like it and how did it work. I currently keep the quilt box above the feeder/spacer.
When to stop winter feeding honey bees
When to stop is completely weather and fauna dependent. After the nectar flow starts the bees will no longer be consuming the sugar bricks. You can leave them on the hive in case there is a turn in the weather, but I usually remove no later than when night time temperatures are above 50 degrees.
Definitely want to remove before you put on any honey supers. No need to let the bees store sugar into your honey combs.
For other things needing to be done in the winter, check out my post on seasonal beekeeping tasks!