Sugar Syrup for all Seasons!

[Eric McArthur]

Nellie wrote
What's your approach to feeding at this concentration? Slap a litre or two on and see how they get on or fill a huge feeder and leave them to it?
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My philosophy relative to spring feeding is not so much “stimulation” as “feel good factor”. Bees are just like us but smaller! If we do not feel prosperous we do not perform at our best. An individual with an overdraft will not feel so secure as another who is in credit! Consider a honey bee colony, which is approaching ”overdraft” – stores are low! They are limited in their options. Such a borderline colony when presented with a steady income of palatable food will rally and respond with new found vigour – so long as the “feel good” factor is maintained until they can become self sufficient again; and a nectar flow occurs.
Thus feed your bees until a nectar flow starts and the bees are able to exploit it – weather favourable! Can you read the signs which tell that a nectar flow has just begun?
The bees will forsake your 1:2 feed in favour of field nectar! If your feed is 1:1 that could be a dog with a different tail!

[Eric McArthur]

Alex wrote
I put the container across the two feed holes in the crown board without much hope of the 'brick' being well recieved. Four days later the container was full of bees and half empty.
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Welcome to the solidly crystalised sugar (bag) fraternity! Once feeding has been commence it must be continued with until the bees are on a nectar flow – see Nellie above! Sugar feeding should be started at the latest by early March.

[Neils]

So I take it you don't buy into the notion that [over]fed bees become lazy bees and will become "dependent" on syrup over going for forage?

I've no opinion on that one way or another, but it's an oft quoted piece of beekeeping lore it seems.

[gavin]

There is a lot to be said for Ems' comment earlier on about leaving them be so that she can get a feel for the bees natural rhythm through the year. They do seem to appreciate minimal disturbance until the weather gets warmer, but starvation may well be a big issue this year and so it is worth keeping an eye on them. As far as I can tell, beekeepers only feed pollen, pollen substitute and thin syrup for stimulation when there is some early honey crop worth getting - or perhaps when you want to stimulate early queen raising. Stimulation for early queen raising may not be worth doing unless you are also prepared to stimulate the production of lots of drones from several colonies too.

[lindsay s]

Hello EmsE
Here’s my tuppence worth. Every year at the end of March or the start of April I would feed all my bees sugar syrup regardless of their colony size. I did that because I knew no better and I also thought it would stimulate the build up of brood. I have now decided to change tack and this year my colonies will only get syrup if they really are short of stores. In past years when I have made early inspections of my bees I have found no signs of chilled or chalk brood before I started feeding syrup. But once the feeding started chilled/chalk brood would return with a vengeance and like you I believe it’s because there’s not enough bees to look after the brood. I also know that chilled/chalk brood can be caused by other factors.
As I have said in another post I know of beekeepers that don’t bother with much spring feeding and their bees still seem to build up fine.

[Eric McArthur]

Hi Nellie
The only time to fed bees is when they require feeding. Feeding bees in prep for winter should be based on worst case scenario. Double brood box or brood box and a super packed with stores by mid November! Lazy bees? The only time bees might exhibit such a condition is by being forced to swarm prematurely due to lazy or inexperienced beekeepers neglecting to providing sufficient room for breeding/or storing incoming nectar.
Eric

[Calum]

Hi
might be of interest, the current hive weight data for Bavaria out of our local beekeepers magazine. Getting a scales myself soon so I hope to add to the data pool next year !



Interesting just how much the really cold weather lowered stores consumtion as the colonies all stopped laying. Don't understand how some managed to gain weight - guess the beekeeper was replacing empty frames with partially filled stores on the edges.

[Jon]

Here’s my tuppence worth. Every year at the end of March or the start of April I would feed all my bees sugar syrup regardless of their colony size. I did that because I knew no better and I also thought it would stimulate the build up of brood. I have now decided to change tack and this year my colonies will only get syrup if they really are short of stores.

I usually spend March and April removing frames of stores and replacing them with drawn comb which the queen can lay in. As long as there are a couple of frames full of stores that is all they need at this time of year. A brood box clogged up with stores is a bad idea in spring.
the other thing I do in March or April is reduce small clusters to a colony size anywhere between 2 - 4 frames by using dummy boards or transferring the colony to a nuc.
I find that beekeepers either don't seem to feed at all or else worry too much and overfeed at a tremendous rate.

[Eric McArthur]

Jon wrote:
1 usually spend March and April removing frames of stores and replacing them with drawn comb which the queen can lay in. As long as there are a couple of frames full of stores that is all they need at this time of year. A brood box clogged up with stores is a bad idea in spring.
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You must be a busy man – that is labour intensive stuff, with some 20 colonies, I think you said: juggling brood combs with this size of operation is no mean feat. Would it not be simpler to just place a second or third deep brood box with a full complement of drawn brood combs on top of the “being juggled” box? This would give her ladyship all the room she might need, for a while anyway.
A couple of frames of stores in a colony in an unfavourable March would not last a week once the queen gets into gear in the West of Scotland!
I would have thought from my experience in Scotland that these empty drawn combs you are placing in the “brood nest” would be filled with incoming nectar and ultimately defeat the drawn comb removal.

Eric

[Jon]

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You must be a busy man – that is labour intensive stuff, with some 20 colonies,

Pretty busy all right.

Would it not be simpler to just place a second or third deep brood box with a full complement of drawn brood combs on top of the “being juggled” box?

I definitely would not add a second box unless the first box was bunged full of bees with about 8 or 9 frames of brood. Giving extra space before the bees need it is a bad idea imo and will slow down brood rearing due to the extra space they have to heat. At the end of March most of my colonies will be over no more than 6 or 7 frames of bees at best. native type bees tend to overwinter with small clusters so build up is relatively slow.

I would have thought from my experience in Scotland that these empty drawn combs you are placing in the “brood nest” would be filled with incoming nectar and ultimately defeat the drawn comb removal.

Not unless the nectar flow is exceptional such as with oil seed rape nearby. In March and April everything coming in is used to make more bees rather than lay down stores. You get an arch of nectar or pollen at the top of the frame.