cold wet and snow

[smittythesurveyor]

my bees have been in for 3 months this is a cold and snowey
winter.

I put my ear on the supers and hear the bees but iam worried
they will run out of food.

I did leave plenty of honey.

also i did not treat them for mites this year because california
would not let me get abstaine. my cycle was abstain this year but
not to be cause of regulations.

well I will hope for the best

Brian

[AdmiralD]

You can get a feel for how much honey they have by the weight of the hive. You just gotta lift it up...If it feels pretty heavy, you know you still got honey in there....If it's light, time to feel sugar....

[Michael Bush]

>also i did not treat them for mites this year because california
would not let me get abstaine. my cycle was abstain this year but
not to be cause of regulations.

I'm not sure I follow.  California wouldn't let you abstain from treating?  Or California wouldn't let you treat?

[smittythesurveyor]

I could not get abstain this year from my bee product supplier
they said that it was a controlled poisen in california.

I do treat with other things but try to change year to year.
Brian

[Apis629]

Are you talking about Apistan?

[Finsky]

also i did not treat them for mites this year because california

If you afraid that you have too much varroa, one trick is take away first capped brood frames at early spring because most of varroa are under caps.  Of course you can pick with fork some capped pupas to see if you see mites.