Yeah for the guard, hope he eats all the moths and brings his friends for a feast. Had one on my back porch for awhile catching gnats that were attracted to the lights. It is so amazing to watch nature work as attended. I have these hoards of little tree frogs that come to the lights too, every night. They start the journey up the wall at dusk and feast on bugs all night, very cool.
Thank you for the information on the feeders. My winters aren't too much different than yours and I might actually have some warmer days as I seldom get the valley fog that you get. Our lows might be a tad lower and our frost dates a few weeks longer, but nothing dramatic.
I only have one set of lids right now, I bought the telescoping ones which I am not crazy about in the summer, too hard to vent by lifting a corner. But you have given me an idea...get the flat ones for summer with feeder holes and use the telescoping ones for winter as they do keep the rain out nicely.
As far as a flow right now, it is pretty much gone. A few star thistle, some tarweed, a few other thistles, and my flowers and garden. I mow my lawn around my clover and leave mustard to bloom in my orchard. Maybe feeding is in order. No major crops or alfalfa around me either.
In summer, I have found a simply piece of white painted plywood works for a top. As mentioned earlier, I drill two holes at 2 and 1/16 inch. The vent hole I staple #2 hardware cloth on the underside so the air can enter, but keeps robber bees out. For the second hole, I simply place an inverted 16oz mason jar with 4 tiny 1/16 inch holes. The bees can go through that in a day or two.
I pulled all sugar syrup jars off because in the last week we are experiencing a massive bloom of the star thistle. It is the largest I have ever seen, it goes on and on for miles and not I am sure why it is happening. Second reason I pulled the sugar off is because during inspection time, I discovered most hives have more than enough stores for winter. Babs, the best thing I can recommend is to do inspections often. That way you can monitor the condition of each hive and make appropriate decisions in managing each hive. Randy Oliver's site has excellent pictures describing what to look for.
I am discovering quite a diversity from year to year and from hive to hive. Last spring, we had a massive number of mites. One 42 day treatment of Apivar decimated nearly every one of them and our hives began to thrive. Now, the mites are still nearly non-existent, so I am holding off with the OA vapor treatments which only cost pennies. A very good friend of mine who is a master beekeeper in the Sacramento area lost over half of his 70+ hives last winter due to the mites. We cannot afford to be careless with those creatures. They are horrible! Here in the Sacramento area, if you treat for mites too late, it can be the end of your hive during the winter months.
I experienced a terrible failure this summer when I attempted to raise 110 queens and make lots more hives. I used the Nicot system. I did massive reading, but still made several deadly mistakes. What could have been and should have been an easy 12+ hives turned into a horrific failure.
Most of it was my own fault [I did not space and orient the hives correctly, should have waited on the robber screens until AFTER the queens did their mating flight, and should have used a much stronger hive to raise the queen cells]. Worst of all, the queens mating flight times arrived the week we had 105-107 temps for 8 days in a row! So what should have been a 12 for 12 success rate, turned into an embarrassing 4/12 rate. I would have had much greater success if I had simply done splits.
After all is said and done, I have spent way too much time and money with the bees. With God's help, I hope to split and sell in the spring, double my initial investment, then I will downsize to 5 or so hives. What nobody told me was when you get up toward 15-20 hives, things begin to change...as in bees dive bombing you every time you open a water faucet in the summer within 100 yards of your bee apiary, many more stings, much greater risks, large spans of time to do the inspections, taking detailed notes on each hive [documentation], etc. The list goes on and on.
I am scaling way back.
Hope this helps!
I fed heavily in the fall last year, because stores were awfully low. They built up good storage, and I didn't need to feed all winter. I added the pollen patty (Dadant patties) around mid-January. One hive took them like crazy, the other took a while longer to get through it. They built up nicely for the spring bloom in February.
I guess I need to relocate my praying mantis' to my beehives. I see them all around, but not at my hives.
Hoping for a nice, wet winter. We had a great honey year this year, and hoping for a great year next year as well.
Congrats on the honey. We have never received much honey in the three years we been doing this.
Careful on the PM. Someone told me they also eat bees!
