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The essence of being a good beekeeper, to me at least, is in being a good manager. Beekeeping is not a 'leave alone' activity. To be good at beekeeping, you manage and manipulate your colonies. This is primarily for your purposes, of course. You want to produce a crop of honey. It is also in the interest of the colony. Your interests and those of the colony coincide to the extent that you both want the colony to survive.
Where the two sets of interest differ, however, is in the overall objective in producing honey. The bee colony would be quite content in gathering only enough for their immediate needs and to get them through the coming winter. You as the beekeeper are trying to get them to gather not only that amount, but a surplus for you to take from them as your 'cut' for the work you put in.
And that's where feeding sugar can come in. It is a tool of management. If used properly, it can enable the colony not only to survive but to prosper. And yes, it is manipulation of the bees. Its not 'natural', whatever that might mean in this context. It is an artificial means of controlling the colony's development.
Because part of my initial interest in beekeeping was the 'health food' movement, I have always felt a little funny in feeding ordinary white sugar to my bees. Isn't this the same sugar that I know is not good for me, and yet I have the nerve to feed it to my bees so as to get more honey from them?
If you study the problem a bit more, you will find the nectar that they gather from flowers is primarily sucrose! Sucrose (ordinary white sugar) is a disaccaride. That is, it is a complex sugar. Bees have the ability to 'invert' this sucrose. Inversion is the process of breaking down the complex sugar into the simple sugars dextrose and levulose.
Bees are able to do this very well, thank you, and we as beekeepers need feel no moral qualms about feeding sugar syrup to them.
Why Feed Bees?
Why do we need to feed our bees? Three basic categories stand out as good reasons to feed:
FEEDING TO AVOID STARVATION When many beekeepers think of keeping a hive from starvation, they think mostly of the winter. In fact, most hives that starve do so in the spring. Colonies do not really need all that much honey to get them through the winter. Only when they begin large amounts of brood rearing in the spring are their stores rapidly depleted.
An excellent 'rule of thumb' to follow in the spring is to never let the amount of sealed stores in the hive drop below two frames. As soon as you hit this point, the queen will start to taper off egg laying When I talk about feeding to avoid starvation, then, it is really a matter of feeding before that time or else you'll run into all sorts of other problems trying to get the hive up to strength for the honey flow later on.
Feeding for Stimulation
Feeding can be used for another purpose apart from merely providing the stores the hive needs to keep from starving. Beekeepers argue long and hard about how best to stimulate hives when you want to and avoid it when you don't.
The actual urge to rear brood in the hive is a complicated matter. In its most simplified form, it is stimulated by pollen being brought in by foragers, but only maintained with an intake of nectar.
We as beekeepers can influence this by feeding, making the colony 'think' that there is a moderate honey flow in progress, causing them to keep up the queen's egg laying. But since it is a complicated process, feeding all on its own won't have this effect. Other factors such as temperature, pollen availability and genetic characteristics come into play as well What happens when you need to feed the colony but you don't want to stimulate brood rearing? Some beekeepers feed dry sugar for this purpose, but be forewarned. Feeding dry sugar is only successful if the colony is able to get out to gather either water or real nectar. A weak or starving colony will not be able to handle dry sugar at all.
Feeding for Winter Stores
One of the most common mistakes of the beginner beekeeper is to take the phrase 'winter feeding' at face value. If you wait until winter to feed your bees, you have waited too late.
Bees have to use up a lot of energy in the conversion of sugar syrup into stores. They not only have to invert the sucrose, they have to evaporate off the excess moisture. To provide winter stores, hives must be fed in the autumn The best date to feed will vary with your area. If you feed too early in the autumn, you risk stimulating the queen into a renewed burst of egg laying. If you wait too late, cold weather will make the feeding difficult for the colony to handle.
Types of Feeders
Again, I get to use my 'position of authority' in writing this column to trot out some of my pet prejudices and peeves. If you don't agree with me, be sure to complain loudly!
Though I am a keen gadget beekeeper, I cannot for the life of me see the need for the numerous and complicated varieties of feeders available. For my own hives, I have division board feeders of the plastic variety and can find no reason to even try others now.
Division board feeders take the place of a frame in the hive and are really just a trough to place sugar syrup in. Though these feeders were not homemade as is much of my equipment and thus cost me a few dollars, I consider them a necessary and justified expense. They are virtually indestructible, hold as much feed as I ever want to feed at one time and take away much of the worry associated with feeding syrup.
They must have some sort of floatation material so the bees will not drown in the syrup. I use bracken fern; when it gets too old, there's plenty available to take its place I consider the Boardman feeder that is often foisted off on the unsuspecting beginner to be a real abomination. This feeder which supports an upturned Agee jar of syrup at the hive entrance has everything going against it. It does not hold enough syrup, bees are not really able to use it in colder weather and it encourages robbing by feeding at the entrance of the colony. How anyone would defend it is beyond me (Doesn't that sound like a challenge?)
How to Mix Sugar Syrup
Beekeeping books, especially those written for English conditions, spend pages on how to mix syrup, giving different concentrations for different times of the year and discussing the merits of feeding syrup warm.
Dare I be a disbeliever and tell you to ignore all that? For my experience, the best thing you can do is feed as 'heavy' a syrup as you can mix. Beekeeping research backs me up on this.
My rule of thumb for this one is simple. Take whatever container you are mixing in, be it saucepan or 44 gal (200 litre) drum, and imagine it divided into thirds. Fill it one third full of water, either warm or cold. Warm water works faster in dissolving the sugar but it isn't essential.
Now start pouring sugar into the container. The water level will begin to rise (Remember the Aesop's Fable about the crow wanting to drink water from the jar?). Keep adding sugar until the level reaches almost to the two thirds level of the container. Now stir with vigour. Unless you used very hot water, the sugar will not all dissolve. Go away and leave it for awhile and come back and stir again, digging deep to lift the gluggy mass from the bottom.
After a few stirrings like this, over a period of an hour or so, the syrup will change from milky colour to almost clear. And that's it! You may find some sugar still undissolved on the bottom, as this mix is actually slightly heavier than will be stay in solution at normal temperature If you're one of those people who need recipes for everything, Cliff van Eaton, Apicultural Advisory Officer from Whangarei, gives a good answer. 9 kilos of sugar mixed into 5 litres of water will give 10.8 litres of heavy syrup
How Much to Feed?
Well, again, your local conditions will cause some variation. I find that a full depth feeder of syrup will last even the strongest of hives 2 to 3 weeks in the spring. Another rule of thumb I work to is that 5 litres of heavy syrup is about equivalent to two frames of stores.
The bees should take the syrup out of the feeder within just a few days; if they haven't, its possible the colony is too weak to handle the volume given or there is some other complicating factor.
I hope these few notes will help you some in your beekeeping. Do not feel intimidated when you find you need to feed. It is one of the important tasks of management that you will need to learn to be competent.
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