Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 5 hours ago
There is a lot of pressure in the beekeeping industry to put on all kinds of miracle winter feeds and stimulants. More often than not less is more and the bees will do just fine without much winter intervention if they were set up well in the fall. My main goal with winter hive checks is to make sure there is an adequate sized cluster and that they have enough stores. I only intervene if they are in need of more food. In January I will likely start to do queen excluder combines with some of the weakest colonies. Nearly all of my operation was treatment free until August at which point I started treating colonies with high mite loads and leaving colonies with low mites treatment free. Thus it makes sense that I will see more mortality in the treatment cohort as they were likely under more summer and fall virus and treatment stress.
If you are interested in Virginia nucs or getting on the list for queens you can follow this link:
https://sourwoodfarm.square.site/bees
There is a lot of pressure in the beekeeping industry to put on all kinds of miracle winter feeds and stimulants. More often than not less is more and the bees will do just fine without much winter intervention if they were set up well in the fall. My main goal with winter hive checks is to make sure there is an adequate sized cluster and that they have enough stores. I only intervene if they are in need of more food. In January I will likely start to do queen excluder combines with some of the weakest colonies. Nearly all of my operation was treatment free until August at which point I started treating colonies with high mite loads and leaving colonies with low mites treatment free. Thus it makes sense that I will see more mortality in the treatment cohort as they were likely under more summer and fall virus and treatment stress.
If you are interested in Virginia nucs or getting on the list for queens you can follow this link:
https://sourwoodfarm.square.site/bees
