In this instructional video, Laurence Edwards warns beekeepers about the dangers of a false start to spring followed by a sudden cold snap, a situation common in March and early April. He explains how warm weather drives heavy pollen flow, triggering rapid brood expansion and capped brood, which then becomes a heavy energy burden when temperatures drop and bees must cluster to keep the brood warm. This can lead to isolation starvation, where bees are reluctant to move to stored food outside the brood area. Edwards advises limiting inspections and avoiding the premature addition of supers. If supers are already on the hives, he recommends removing them, shaking bees back into the brood box, and placing a modest 2–3 kg slab of plain baker’s fondant directly on the cluster. He stresses checking hive weight (hefting) to gauge store levels, and if hives are light, feeding fondant promptly. Providing extra space under the brood box is recommended to accommodate expansion, prevent early swarming, and allow easy placement of fondant without forcing bees to climb through empty supers. He outlines a step‑by‑step checklist: assess weather, inspect brood and stores, adjust hive space, feed fondant if needed, and monitor weight throughout the cold spell. The video concludes with a reminder that March is the critical period when colonies most often starve, and proactive management can prevent losses before the true spring arrives.
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We said all the way throughout the winter, the last thing we want is a false start in spring and then a really cold snap to hit in March or April. That is exactly what we've got. So therefore, in this video, I'm going to tell you how to best set up your colonies to make sure that A, they've got enough space, and more importantly, B, how to set your colonies up for an early spring cold snap. I just knew this was going to happen. The weather looks fine, it's been like 17, 18, 19 degrees here. We've made decisions based upon the nice weather, we've moved things over, and then yet we've been hit with a cold snap. Luckily, it's not been anywhere near as bad as previous years where we've had a very cold snap around late March, early April. That can really cause issues with your bees, and the biggest problem is that if you've set your colonies up and you've gone and put your supers on, you're going to be in a really tough position now. And this is why I've said to people, don't go in, don't go and put your supers on, Limit the amount of inspections that you do, and I'm just so glad that I've not gone round all of mine and put the supers on because I know for a fact I would be in big, big trouble now. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what's going on in the colonies at the moment. This weather is driving huge amounts of pollen into the colony. The warm weather, the longer days, the pollen coming in has turbocharged that queen, and if you were to go through all of your colonies at the moment, I suspect you would find a significant amount of worker brood and capped brood. The bees are only doing what comes naturally to them, and that is. rapid spring expansion. Now when you switch off that pollen flow, you switch off the warm weather, and it becomes cold all of a sudden, the bees' natural instinct is to cluster down to keep that brood warm, and they need to tend to all of the brood that's yet to be capped over. All of this is very, very energy intensive, and what you'll find, and I've said it before, is that March is the period where colonies starve. It also brings into play isolation starvation here, which we said before is when a colony is really reluctant to move away from a big patch of brood. And if you've got brood sitting over, say, 4 or 5 frames, and then the outer frames is where you've got your stores set up, the bees will not go and move to that food if the weather doesn't allow them to go and move to it and just kind of break that food down and bring it back to where they're clustering around the brood. They have to make a decision, and this is when you're likely to get isolation starvation. Luckily, I don't think the temperatures are going to get anywhere near that low. We're still talking kind of 8 or 9 degrees during the day. The bees should be able to move around freely within the beehive. And okay, overnight they're probably going to cluster down. It's looking at about 1 or 2 degrees overnight. Bees should be fine, I think, in terms of isolation starvation. Definitely do not get caught out with your bees starving at this time of year. If you've already put supers on, you've not got a huge amount that you can do in this instance. You either need to go and feed through the supers but the bees are probably going to be reluctant to move up through the empty foundation frames to get either fondant or to get syrup if you're feeding them syrup. Probably going to be a bit cold to feed syrup as well. Your other option, and it's the option that I probably would recommend, is to go and take those supers away, shake all the bees back into the brood box, get yourself a nice big slab of fondant directly onto the frames. And I'm not talking about a kind of 12.5 kg slab of fondant, you definitely don't need that at this time of the year, and you definitely don't need to feed fondant just because the weather's going to get cold. Heft your hives, check what the weight's like. If you think they're heavy enough to get through a couple of weeks of cold weather, fine, you can just leave them as they are. If they're hefting light, there's lots of brood present, and you're moving into a 2-week cold spell in March, alarm bells should definitely be ringing, and you need to get yourself a nice big slab of fondant on there. I would recommend maybe like a 2 or 3 kilogram slab of fondant. Doesn't need to be fancy fondant, doesn't need to be pollen substitute, it can just be plain old baker's fondant. What they need, the thing that's going to stop them starving, is plain carbohydrates. So just a simple sugar baker's fondant. This is why I always say at this time of the year, if you need to give your bees additional space, give them the additional space underneath the brood box. You can twist things around at a later date, but by doing that, giving them the additional space under the brood box, it means that if you do get a cold snap like this You can place your feeders back on, you can place the fondant back on directly onto the top of the frames where that cluster sits. That's what's so important here. If you go and put a big slab of fondant directly on top of your supers that have not been drawn out and it's just foundation, it's not great to be putting that on your supers anyway, but the bees will be really reluctant to move up to it and they probably won't move up to it. But by adding that space underneath, you're serving 2 purposes. You're giving the bees the additional space that they need to expand at this time of the year, so you're not restricting them. You're kind of eliminating the chance of early swarms due to not having enough space in the brood area. You're mitigating the fact that the temperature within that cluster is gonna be going up and there's gonna be a void, so it's gonna take the bees a lot more energy to heat that hive up. And you also give yourself that option to get back in there to add fondant if you do, like we've got this year, get a cold snap after you've had a really nice couple of weeks of warm weather. So a few things for you to think about there. Hopefully you've not been caught out. Hopefully you've not gone and put your supers on too early thinking that they're gonna be going wild and bringing back supers of honey in the nice week that we've had early March. These 2 weeks are the weeks where colonies will die through starvation. Don't get caught out. My recommendation, if you've got your supers on and they're empty, whip them off, get some fondant directly on that cluster, leave them for a couple of weeks, make sure they get through this couple of weeks, and then we can get into the real spring when it gets into April and we get a longer spell of settled weather. If you want to take a look at one of my videos from last year, I was in a very similar predicament. The bees were drawing wild comb in the Upton Poly Ashforth feeders, but the weather wasn't looking good. I stuck by my guns, I didn't add the supers, and it turned out really, really well in that apiary. Check out this video here.
