Key points of colony management in cold season

With the advent of winter, the climate temperature decreases gradually, how to manage the overwintering bee colony is related to the reproduction and honey collection of the bee colony in the coming year. During this period, beekeepers should pay attention to the following points:

I. overwintering mode

According to the survey, indoor placement is commonly used at present. Bees are moved indoors on a cold morning before heavy snow, with a row against the wall on both sides and a row in the middle, so that the hatchback has access for easy management. Put 4-5 floors on each row, that is, four or five boxes. The packing room must be clean and odorless, especially if there is no moldy gas, the doors and windows are intact, the ventilation facilities are good, and there are no rat holes in the house. Another way is field packaging, choose away from the road, seismic construction and smelly places, the terrain is slightly higher and flat without stagnant water. Spread plastic sheeting in advance, and then put wheat straw or straw to sit on the ground. The back of the box is tightly surrounded and filled between the boxes. The lid of the box should also be covered with insulation and Reed mats.

II. Bee colony inspection

Indoor packaging of bees easy to check, as long as there is no abnormal restless sound, can not move out of the box to check, through the ear to judge normal. The room is equipped with a thermometer, the temperature is kept between 0 ℃ ~ 5 ℃, if the temperature is too high, you should open the window to cool down, reduce the feed consumption, and if it is too low, it will cause freezing to death. The doors and windows should be blocked strictly to prevent the sun from shining in. Only a dark mass can rest in peace and silence, and observe whether there are rats entering. The field packaging group has a large amount of cold and hot activities during the day, so it should be covered with grass curtains. The warm weather should be lifted to let the bees discharge, and the cold weather will cover the nest door with window screens to cover the grass curtains.

Third, deal with the problems of frostbite and lack of honey

The buzzing sound of tapping the box body with your hand indicates that it is normal. if there is no buzzing sound, you should immediately move it to the warm house to check the cause, replace the honey-deficient ones into the stored honey spleen, spray a little honey on the falling bee body, eat honey and climb back to the spleen after waking up, and put it back to the original place after fully returning to normal.

In addition, it should also be noted that the colony feed should not be fed too late, the feed moisture should not be too large, and the moisture content should not be too large, which is easy to cause indigestion of bees, thus causing belly distension, which is called belly disease; when the temperature of the beehive is too cold, the feed consumption is fast, and the rate of bee starvation and freezing to death is high, which needs to be warmed up by eating honey; at the same time, beekeepers should closely observe the situation of bees, and the general phenomenon of colony starvation and freezing to death is delayed by observation and treatment not in time.

Ren Fu Zhen, Chengjitou Township Government, Xingtai County