.Results seemed quite mad compared to 5 months results..
Yes, it`s very strange and controversial results: the less is the average consumption for the 5 months of a particular hive, the more it consumes during Jan-Feb.
Anyway
It must be about 10kg or more per month?
But, err, I expect them to survive the whole winter on 20kg.
Hm...
I`m glad that the practical weighing indicates, that even taking in account all those factors like “rain, wetting, drying, frosting, melting and what ever”
, the actual results are much less than 10kg/month
We also should know that the bees do not fly for no return - they are a little more clever than to waste energy.
Yep. My bees even managed to harvest something from moss and sphagnum in my backyard
( Spores as an alternative to pollen? )
.Put your own balance and try how it really goes.
I was thinking one day about buying a hanging scales like this(it`s a 300kg version) and assembling a weighing station alike.
Something like this, but a transportable version, that could be transferred from one hive to another
unthinking beekeeper has put much of their winter stores beneath them!
That`s a mistake that I have quickly fixed during last inspection. The theory behind putting BB at the top seemed to be logical: there is warmer -> good for brood rearing. But in reality bees consume the honey that has to be preheated by the cluster, thus the cluster should be beneath the stores as the heat raise up. The yearly natural top brood edge movement is also pendulum alike: it moves upwards during a winter time when eggs laying start to increase, and downwards during that period of a summer when eggs laying get shrinking AFAIK.
So… It seems to me that the “unthinking beekeeper” thought too much in this case
The stores are at the top now.
Cold winter kills hives more than warm winter.
I would suspect even that it`s not a winter at all that kills hives
Climate factors only jeopardize ( or improve) the actual issues within a hive IMHO.
