# Mountain Camp Method;



## NonTypicalCPA (Jul 12, 2012)

How warm should it be to crack open the hive and add sugar? It's cold and snowy here in Michigan at the moment.


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## ycitybz (Jan 2, 2012)

NonTypicalCPA said:


> How warm should it be to crack open the hive and add sugar? It's cold and snowy here in Michigan at the moment.


I would not open them unless it is 40 degrees up there. If you have no other choice open them and move quick...


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## funwithbees (Mar 27, 2010)

we open them in the 20's if they need fed. I have seen good hives spend half the winter with the covers blown off and a snow drift on top and they survive just fine as long as they have food.
Its better to open and feed than let them starve.
Nick


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## westernbeekeeper (May 2, 2012)

funwithbees said:


> we open them in the 20's if they need fed. I have seen good hives spend half the winter with the covers blown off and a snow drift on top and they survive just fine as long as they have food.
> Its better to open and feed than let them starve.
> Nick


Same here.


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## NonTypicalCPA (Jul 12, 2012)

Thanks guys. I don't think they need any but I guess I'm a little paranoid being my first year.


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## Wesbee (Oct 16, 2012)

I put mine on a few wk ago, 36 degrees, but I have a quilt on,so I cut a piece of 1/8 panel the size of the hive. lifted the quilt an 1/8 in and slid the panel in. then took off quilt , put on mountain camp,then quilt on top and pulled out the panel. the Bees were never exposed to the weather ( I didn't think we would get any 50 degre days in Wis untll mid-march)


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## kenr (Sep 25, 2005)

I put mine on a newspaper works great.


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## Russ (Sep 9, 2001)

It is good Insurance to keep them from STARVING!!!!!


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## NY_BLUES (May 14, 2009)

Yes this is a great way to keep the colony from starving. i sometimes make a thick "candy" using bee pro and sugar, and just enough water to make it thick. I make mine thicker than any pollen or sub pattie ive seen. I put down a piece of newspaper, with the center ripped out, and place the thick mixture or dry sugar around the outside. Replace the inner cover and outer cover. I like this method more than candy boards or heavy feeding in the fall with 2:1 that doesnt get capped.


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## MelanieWoosley (Nov 11, 2012)

Wesbee said:


> I put mine on a few wk ago, 36 degrees, but I have a quilt on,so I cut a piece of 1/8 panel the size of the hive. lifted the quilt an 1/8 in and slid the panel in. then took off quilt , put on mountain camp,then quilt on top and pulled out the panel. the Bees were never exposed to the weather ( I didn't think we would get any 50 degre days in Wis untll mid-march)


What exactly do you mean by "quilt?"


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

Please realize that if you adequately prepare your bees in the fall you should not have any emergencies that require the Mountain Camp Method. Emergencies are something to be avoided... not planned to have them occur.


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## mmiller (Jun 17, 2010)

Andrew Dewey said:


> Please realize that if you adequately prepare your bees in the fall you should not have any emergencies that require the Mountain Camp Method. Emergencies are something to be avoided... not planned to have them occur.


This is a very good point. It seems alot of beekeepers are emergency feeding all of their colonies all of the time. This is not a good practice. Put them to winter plenty heavy and you'll have to use the "mountain camp" method very seldom. That being said, I did have to put some sugar on 2 (out of 30ish). They were just too lite even though they were heavy in the fall. They may have had enough stores but I felt they were close and decided to play it safe. 

Mike


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## Sr. Tanya (Feb 9, 2007)

I've used the Mountain Camp method in lean years. Right now I have left a super on my hives that were not as heavy as I thought they should be. *My question* is- can I put the sugar on the super? I don't know if the bees are too far down in the hive boxes to make it worth while.

Tanya


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

MelanieWoosley said:


> What exactly do you mean by "quilt?"


Here's one example (with photos):
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?240315-lang-quilt-box


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## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

Sr. Tanya, if you left a super of honey on the bees they should be ok for now. Unless the cluster has moved up into that super, putting sugar on top of the super now won't do much good. Maybe if you get a little nicer day you can take a quick peek under the cover and see if the bees are near the inner cover hole yet, and if they are then adding sugar either on the inner cover or on top of the super frames on newspaper will help if they are running short on food. With the weather this cold you don't want to pop off the cover if you don't need to, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do to make sure they don't starve. John


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## Sr. Tanya (Feb 9, 2007)

John,

The weather is supposed to get up into the 50's in a few days. I'll see how they are doing then. I already lost one hive that had lots of stores. Not sure, right now, what happened.

Tanya


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## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

Sr. Tanya, not surprising that people will be losing hives in the extreme cold we have been having, I have lost two recently, both had plenty of sealed honey within a couple inches of the dead cluster, the problem with mine was that the clusters were too small to keep warm and they couldn't move to get to the honey when the cold wave hit hard. I just hate losing hives hive to starvation, I'm thinking that from now on if I have small clusters entering winter, I should just put them in nuc boxes and bring them into the basement and keep them in the dark and as cool as possible. What have you got to lose? John


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## Sr. Tanya (Feb 9, 2007)

John,

I'm at the point of checking out local bee men to see if they'll have bees to sell. It was a tough year for me bee-wise. Our basement may bee to warm and I can't carry them myself anyway.

Tanya


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## Russ (Sep 9, 2001)

Andrew, I thought mine were good on stores in the Fall but you can't control the kind of winter you will have. Still the Mountain Camp Method is good Insurance and it is cheaper than buying Bee's. Like others have said, you gotta do what you gotta do.


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## EastSideBuzz (Apr 12, 2009)

Russ said:


> Still the Mountain Camp Method is good Insurance and it is cheaper than buying Bee's.


So the mountain camp method does two things. It gives them emergency feed and it absorbs moisture. I do recommend using inverted sugar or Dri-vert sugar and not granulated sugar. They just take that out unless it is wet then they will eat it.


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## westernbeekeeper (May 2, 2012)

May I ask what invert sugar is? I have not done much dry feeding, and I am wondering what is meant by "invert sugar".


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

westernbeekeeper said:


> May I ask what invert sugar is?


Domino Sugar has a lot of useful info about sugars on their website:



> Standardized inverts made from pure cane sugar by a process that converts sucrose into a combination of fructose and dextrose sugars, resulting in a characteristically unique sweetener system. These sugars have significantly different characteristics than sucrose, corn syrup combinations, or other sugars, and offer a lighter flavor, increased moisture retention in fresh baked goods, improved crust color, solubility, and enhanced shelf life.
> 
> _More here:
> _http://www.dominospecialtyingredients.com/?pageId=1090&rowId=11412


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## urbanoutlaw (Nov 19, 2012)

Is this recipe for invert sugar (scroll down a little) any good for bees? Cream of Tartar and Citric acid are easily obtainable.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Research on using Cream of tarter and Citric acid to make invert sugar and feeding it to bees has shown it shortens the lives of the bees. It still seems to be a popular thing to do though...


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## urbanoutlaw (Nov 19, 2012)

Michael Bush said:


> Research on using Cream of tarter and Citric acid to make invert sugar and feeding it to bees has shown it shortens the lives of the bees. It still seems to be a popular thing to do though...


What's the advantage of using invert sugar if it has this side-effect? Longer shelf life? Less available water? Is it simply that shortening the lives of (longer-lived) winter bees doesn't have the impact that it would have on spring/summer bees?

Not trying to start any arguments, just curious what's the justification of using invert sugar if it's detrimental to bee longevity.


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## MelanieWoosley (Nov 11, 2012)

Andrew Dewey said:


> Please realize that if you adequately prepare your bees in the fall you should not have any emergencies that require the Mountain Camp Method. Emergencies are something to be avoided... not planned to have them occur.


Newbies dont need to be scolded; I had a split followed by a horrible drought, this being my first year I had no resources to pull from. SO YES, *gasp* I AM FEEDING. Doesn't make me a bad beek.


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

Ma'am your doing fine. Please ignore the congenitally righteous who know what is best for us all. Every single one of my colonies have Mountain camp sugar on them including strong ones that might not need it. You see I have plans to keep bees in the spring and one can't do that unless one has bees. Rational people keep bees to produce honey and it is not a crime to take some. By numbers, the vast majority of bees in the blinkin country each May were raised on man supplied feed! Doesn't sound all that lethal to me. Would it be better if the bees had honey? Of course. But if they ain't go it--don't sweat it--and feed them what you have.


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## NY_BLUES (May 14, 2009)

Melanie, no worries
Dont take his statement personally. We all understand that there are issues that are out of the beekeepers control, such as the weather. You are correct, that doesn't make you a bad beekeeper. By feeding your bees, that makes you a smart beekeeper. Your hive that you help get through winter can be split into 2 or more hives in the spring, and then you may be able to get more than 1 crop of honey off of your hives, if every thing goes right. 
Most beekeepers feed their bees, whether it is emergency feeding in the winter, or stimulative feeding in the spring, feeding is feeding. We are putting food resources into the hive, when the bees didnt collect it themselves. I think that Andrew was more likely aiming his comment at those folks that take every drop of honey off in the fall, and then dont know why they dont have any bees alive come spring time.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>What's the advantage of using invert sugar if it has this side-effect? Longer shelf life? Less available water? Is it simply that shortening the lives of (longer-lived) winter bees doesn't have the impact that it would have on spring/summer bees?

Bees prefer invert sugar. Invert sugar crystallizes less. Bees have to invert sugar that is not inverted by making enzymes. The research on shortening their lives is fairly recent (the last couple of decades maybe, but it's been around at least a decade) and not commonly known. People are slow to change. (not all a bad thing)


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## JD's Bees (Nov 25, 2011)

I don't think Andrew was scolding anyone but rather giving good advice. Hives should go into winter with twenty pounds of feed over the minimum required for your location. That is the emergency feed provided early so there is no winter stress to the colony or beekeeper.
This is obviously going to be hard for a newbie to determine since they don't have the experience of past winters to draw from. 
Cold regions need 60-90 pounds of feed.
Temporate regions need 30-60 lbs.
Warm regions need 15-30 lbs.
Now if in some years the minimum plus 20 lbs. is still not enough then emergency feeding is the right thing to do.


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## DRAKOS (Oct 17, 2011)

A little off topic, but what is the analogy between lbs and pounds?


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

LB is shorthand for a pound. I have often been curious about the origin of this, I will have to research it.


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

"lbs" is an abbreviation for "pounds". No idea why it not something like "pds".

EDIT: here's why ... 


> The form _lb_ is actually an abbreviation of the Latin word _libra_, which could mean a pound, itself a shortened form of the full expression, _libra pondo_, “pound weight”. The second word of this phrase, by the way, is the origin of the English _pound_.
> http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pou1.htm


.


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

Forgive me for keeping an older thread alive but I feel compelled to offer this message:

If your bees are starving or in danger of starving there is nothing wrong with feeding them - and the Mountain Camp Method is a perfectly good way to do so.

What I was talking about earlier is more a criticism of the mind set that says you have to feed bees in the winter time.

It is my belief, and practice, that hives adequately prepared for winter will generally NOT require emergency winter feeding.

As much as anything this is really a case of all bee keeping being local. It was -8 F at my house the other night and I have no intention of unstrapping and unwrapping the hives now to feed. Even if it is needed. If I did my job in the fall they won't need it, and if they are starving now after proper fall preparation I don't want their genetics in my bee yards. Following what I think is good advice from Beekeepers I respect, I no longer just heft hives to gauge stores in the fall. I inspect the hive and see what the stores situation is. Every hive gets put on a scale to see if the total weight is where I want it to be, and supplemental feed is provided to get the hives up to the desired weight (as needed.) While some experienced beekeepers can judge winter stores by heft, I can't, and I believe it is a disservice to new beekeepers to teach them hefting as the sole method of determining adequate stores.

When I check the hives and start to get ready for spring in the Apiary in February or March I tend to feed commercially prepared fondant instead of straight sugar, if stores seem iffy. It is not a given that each hive will get Fondant. My bees have plenty of natural pollen available to them both in the fall and early spring so I don't feed pollen substitute.

It may seem controversial to hold this view, but for me in my location (Coastal Downeast Maine) it works.

My bees are not pets and I do not treat them as such. They are stock. I prefer them live.

Will my practices work for all beekeepers in all locations? I highly doubt it. But I see nothing wrong with the basic strategy.


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

Andrew Dewey said:


> Will my practices work for all beekeepers in all locations? I highly doubt it. But I see nothing wrong with the basic strategy.


No, but it will for beekeepers that have fall flows and cold winters. Good post Andrew! :thumbsup: I tend to agree that there are far too many hives being fed that don't need to be if proper management were practiced.


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## NeilV (Nov 18, 2006)

Fall flow? What's that? I'm beginning to wonder if a spring flow is even in the cards.


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

That is the flow between mite build up and hive collapse.


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