66 / SEEDWORLD.COM DECEMBER 2017 PROTECTINGPOLLINATORS ThisseriesissponsoredbyOperationPollinator, aSyngentaglobalinitiative. WINTER ALWAYS BRINGS uncer- tainties in the agricultural community, but for beekeepers, the cold tempera- tures can be especially unsettling. Unlike farmers and ranchers, beekeepers can’t simply go out to the fields or barn and check on things during particularly dif- ficult conditions. Neither can they provide food or other nourishment if they notice supplies in the hive running low. “You can’t just open the hives and look inside to make sure everything is okay,” said Dr. Kirsten Traynor, a post- doctoral entomology research associate at University of Maryland’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. All preparations and checks need to be completed before temperatures drop to frost levels, which trigger the bees to go into their clustering mode. This cycle allows them to conserve energy and maintain warm-enough temperatures inside the hive to survive extremely harsh weather. Randy Oliver, a commercial beekeeper based in California, said nutrition needs to be monitored closely as fall approaches, as supplemental feeding needs to be done early enough to enable the brood- ing of “winter bees.” It needs to be warm enough for the bees to rear brood and convert any sugar syrup into honey stores for winter. “Colonies need good nutrition in September in order to rear the round of brood that will emerge into the winter bees that will survive until spring,” Oliver said. Depending on location, the fall and winter seasons look different. “In warmer climates, such as in the southern states and California in prepara- tion for almond pollination, colonies can be inspected and cared for throughout the winter,” Oliver said. If there are plants in flower as a pollen source, bees might not go into cluster at all. However, that is only in the most southern states. “Since flowering plants and insect pollinators coevolved, few bee-attractive plants flower unless daytime temps are above 55 degrees F, which is also the tem- perature that honey bees typically start flying,” Oliver said. As fall temperatures drop towards that mark for most of the country, beekeepers start looking to see if food storages are ample. If not, this is when supplemental action is taken. “In areas without fall bloom, such as from goldenrod, beekeepers may feed ‘pollen supplement’ vegetable protein patties to get How beekeepers help their colonies combat the cold.Melissa Shipman melissanshipman@gmail.com SURVIVINGINTHEHIVE their colonies into good shape,” Oliver said. Despite these preparations, Oliver said most population loss occurs in late fall, as those bees that were foragers during summer and fall fly off to die. “The workers that emerge after the first frost, after which there is no incoming pollen, shift physiologically into long-lived winter bees that suffer very little winter mortality unless there are diseases or they starve from lack of honey,” Oliver said. Normal losses for a hive population fall in the 10% range, according to Traynor. “It’s normal for a healthy hive to go into the winter with around 35,000 to 50,000 bees, and they may see a dip of 10-20%, but brood rearing begins again in the middle of the winter season and the hive is usually able to recover those losses if healthy.” A patty of pollen sub being fed to protein-hungry bees. PHOTO SUBMITTED BY RANDY OLIVER