Worldwide Beekeeping

Beekeeping => Beekeeping 101 => Topic started by: mamapoppybee on February 19, 2014, 07:57:49 am

Title: what and when to feed it to bees
Post by: mamapoppybee on February 19, 2014, 07:57:49 am

My bees will be here in late april to early may and i am looking at getting some food supplys set up for them. What do i need to be feeding them at this time as i will be starting from a nuc. Do i want to give feeds to promote build up?

Title: Re: what and when to feed it to bees
Post by: iddee on February 19, 2014, 08:08:12 am

Cane sugar and water, equally. by volume or by weight, doesn't matter.

For practical purposes, sugar and water is 1 lb. to 1 pint.

Title: Re: what and when to feed it to bees
Post by: Perry on February 19, 2014, 09:53:17 am

What Iddee said. I might add that I encourage folks to feed until they don't take it, especially for nucs and packages. They have a tremendous amount of work ahead of them drawing all that comb and anything you can do to make a difference, helps. They will stop taking it when the real deal is plentiful.

Title: Re: what and when to feed it to bees
Post by: Riverrat on February 19, 2014, 03:24:41 pm

Good advise above. I usually feed until I got 2 deeps drawn out and they are heavy with stores. Concentrate first year of the hive to building it up to get through winter. If you do get honey this year its a bonus.

Title: Re: what and when to feed it to bees
Post by: LazyBkpr on February 19, 2014, 05:04:57 pm

Perrys bees are smarter than mine..  My first packages never stopped taking syrup. Dandilions and all sorts of flowers were in full bloom. They packed every spare cell in the new hive with syrup.. when they began to dwindle I noticed, and realized there was no brood anywhere. As fast as a bee emerged the cell was filled with syrup..  I stopped feeding and scrounged a couple of drawn combs from a neighbor and that allowed the queen to lay again. I really think I would have lost those hives if I hadn't done that.
   Some bees are smarter than others, so when your feeding make sure to look at the frames to see if they are getting bound..   I had a second box on all the hives, but all the frames in them were undrawn. The frames in the main chamber were about 70% drawn, but not FULLY drawn, meaning the cells were not fully finished in depth. Even the cells that were JUST started had syrup in them. It took the bees another two or three weeks to begin to recover, after that they did fine..  so... not going to disagree with his Perrymeisterness, just wanted the possibility to be made aware of.