Hungry bees

At inspection today, two of my five hives had slow-moving, relatively inactive bees. Last week I extracted honey and removed supers. The two brood boxes have a lot of bees but there is plenty of space. There are stores but only patchy and only on one or two frames. I plan to feed this evening.

Should I assume that the bees were so short of stores and that this is why they have slowed?

This prompts me to ask if anyone has advice on feeding, other than the usual "fondant in spring and a "good feed of syrup in late summer".

I often have a spell during August where anything which isn't sound to begin with is liable to starve, it's the break between the main flow and the full-on flowering of the ragwort. The slow and inactive description sounds right to me -but catch them soon enough and they seem to just 'switch' back on. A good remedy when they're like that is to take an empty comb from the hive and pour syrup into the cells then place it back, next to the cluster.

edit: any feeding method which doesn't deliver the feed inside the brood chamber probably isn't even worth the effort in a case like this -the feed needs to be next to the bees at least initially.

If your using single brood boxes like nationals or smiths, it's always worth having a look to make sure they have stores. A queen in a good year will fill the brood box and have all the stores in the supers. Removing at the wrong time can leave them struggling

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Originally Posted by nemphlar

If your using single brood boxes like nationals or smiths, it's always worth having a look to make sure they have stores. A queen in a good year will fill the brood box and have all the stores in the supers. Removing at the wrong time can leave them struggling

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I have to agree with you Nemphlar I was clearing honey from two hives yesterday the first one had 2½ supers and the second one had nothing and was starving. There was no open brood although the queen’s still there and no stores in the brood box. Only two weeks ago this hive had nine bars of brood and a super nearly full of honey but very little in the brood box. The weather has turned a lot cooler here, the clover has died off and I don’t think it was robbed out. Emergency feeding is taking place and I might even unite it in the next few weeks. I was speaking to our secretary today and it looks like there will be a poor honey crop here this year; mine will certainly be below average.

The weather in NI has been cool and wet now for 3 weeks so stores are getting used up fast.
People are removing supers at the moment so some feeding will likely be necessary.

As Jon says, supers are being brought home to extract, so far I've got at least 60 full waiting to be extracted and at least another 50 still to collect from other various apairy sites. This has to be one of the best years since 76, wish I had a 40 frame extractor.

Some hives do have sufficient stores other's need feeding, I always give a half gallon or more of feed after taking off the supers as a safety net as we will be waiting at least another month before the Ivy buds which can be seen now getting ready to burst into flower.

Also, dont forget to use your prefared varroa control treatment after supers come off

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Originally Posted by prakel

I often have a spell during August where anything which isn't sound to begin with is liable to starve, it's the break between the main flow and the full-on flowering of the ragwort. The slow and inactive description sounds right to me -but catch them soon enough and they seem to just 'switch' back on. A good remedy when they're like that is to take an empty comb from the hive and pour syrup into the cells then place it back, next to the cluster.

edit: any feeding method which doesn't deliver the feed inside the brood chamber probably isn't even worth the effort in a case like this -the feed needs to be next to the bees at least initially.

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Both of the slow-moving hives are moving nicely having started to take down the feed I gave them - good to know that stores shortage was the issue.