New Lesson Learned

[Steel Tiger]

 Went out today to check the hives. It was near 60, very foggy and cloudy. As I was walking across the field, one of the hives appeared damaged. When I got close, it turned out to be newspaper hanging out of the hive from when I added sugar, and it was soaked.
  I opened the first hive that I was sure was dead and still no signs of life. I opened the second hive and there was a mound of sugar on top of wet newspaper and no sign of bees.
Lesson learned: if using newspaper, leave none sticking out as it will wick the water in.
 I started scooping out the sugar and bees started climbing out from under the edges of the paper. I added the frames of honey from the dead hive as I removed the sugar and wet paper. The bees started working on the honey as soon as it were in the box.
 Some of the sugar was like rock candy. It appears sugar is useful to get rid of moisture that the bees make. I may go out tomorrow, if it stops raining, and put a layer of paper towels on top of the frames to help keep things dry.
 All in all, they looked great. Three of them buzzed me. Several decided it was a good time to do a cleaning flight. By the time I had everything closed up and strapped down, there was stains in the snow that wasn't there when I walked up.

[T Beek]

Sorry for the losses.  I've got at least another month or more before I can make any kind of decisions re; dead outs.  They are always a bummer….  I agree though, trim any newspaper remaining outside the hive body when adding dry sugar above, its why I only use a piece of paper large enough to cover the center hole or holes depending on type of inner cover.

You're also right about the amount of moisture dry sugar collects.  By the time the bees find it, if needed they're usually licking 'rock candy' instead of the granulated sugar I left them.  :)