Topic: Bee Food

[Chantenay]

What is the best sugar syrup recipe for this time of year please. My book says 2:1 sugar to water, but what does that mean in actual pounds and pints.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Assuming you're using gallon containers, what I do for spring feeding is put a 2Kg bag full of sugar into it, then fill up with water. For autumn feeding, I use two bags, fill up with hot water, and stir like mad till it's all dissolved. The reason is simply that it takes less work for the bees to produce honey from it for storing. The latter is 2:1, and it just means 2lb sugar to 1 pint of water; the light syrup for spring feeding is 1lb of sugar to 1pint of water, but there's no need to worry about exact amounts.

The big question is, why are you feeding? It's very easy to get the impression that every colony needs feeding every year, and it's just not true, unless the beekeeper is being greedy and leaving them with insufficient stores. Remember bees are native to the UK, and all this stuff about moveable frames, feeding, etc. was only invented in Victorian times.

Strains vary enormously in the amount of stores they get through over winter, so if you're new to this strain, feeding is a useful precaution, but then observe them over winter, and see how many frames of stores have been eaten by the spring. If they get through to March with 2-3 frames of honey left, they'll be fine. Less than that and they're likely to need spring feeding in a bad season. The first strain I had wintered with enormous clusters the size of a football, ate themselves out of house and home, and really did need feeding. Eventually I replaced them with native bees, which winter with very small clusters, eat very little, and don't normally need feeding at all. You can guess which I prefer.

This year I'm going to be doing quite a bit of feeding, as I have recent splits with loads of empty frames. Next year, they'll have plenty of time to fill up those frames with their own honey, and I don't anticipate feeding at all unless I make more splits.

[Chantenay]

Oh dear, this is v. puzzling. The book says feed them in August - mind you, it also says give them apistan, but I really don't want to do that. ???
I suppose it's because they haven't really produced much honey - they are just capping over three supers at present, and I was going to leave them with all the brood chamber frames (which are full) and those three supers, and give them a bit of extra to keep their strength up. How would I know how much they need for the winter?

[calendula]

as Robert says you need to observe them - if you are not going to  take any honey from them and you are leaving 3 supers that is probably more than enough - remember they know what they are doing without human intervention  ;)

[Robert_Brenchley]

What size broodbox do you have them in? If they've filled three supers then they aren't short! If you've got them in Nationals, then for this year, I might leave them one super just in case. That should then be ample, and you may well find it isn't used to any extent. As I say, my bees are very frugal, and will, quiite seriously, go through the winter on a couple of standard National frames of honey. Not that I'd leave a colony with so little! But then I had that other strain which would never have survived in the UK without beekeeper help, as they ate themselves out of house and home. personally I loathe bees like that, but to be fair, some people swear by them.

I'm still raising queens, but I'll start feeding the splits shortly. I often leave it till October, if I'm doing it at all, and it's never been a problem. I wouldn't give them Apistan, as there's a very good chance your local varroa are now immune. Forget the stuff, get some Apiguard, and put it on straightaway, as soon as you can get the supers off. This is the ideal time of year to put it on, neither too hot nor too cold. Alternatively, if you're mite levels are reasonably low, you could wait till about Christmas and use oxalic acid, or leave the apiguard till May. but don't trust yourself to apistan; even if it works this year, it probably won't next. A lot of hives locally were wiped out last year as people were still using it without realising the resistant mite was upon us, and my hives were overwhelmed by other people's mites as a result, causing me real problems.

What's the book, incidentally? If you want the latest up-to-date info, don't rely on books; I wouldn't be without them, but by the time they're in print, they're at least a year out of date, and time, tide and varroa wait for nobody. Join the group here http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/irishbeekeeping/ , and ask what you like. You'll always get a load of answers.