Bee Chronicles Sept. 2016
Oh, my bee yards???
I still have lots of happy bees. However, it has bee dry. Very little nectar coming into the hives and I am out of sugar to make syrup for supplemental feeding.
You need to start feeding your bees how. Feed for the spring in the fall! Bees won’t make honey when the temperature is under 50o. If they run low on food stores next spring emergency feeding might not work. Feeding syrup now allows the bees to make enough honey because the bee populations are at their largest. The bees can mix flower nectar and pollen with the syrup making it a better food.
You will need to get 90 lbs. of honey in the hive before Thanksgiving. That is what it takes from Dec. to Mar. Every warm day all winter long the bees will go out flying looking for flowers. They will come home hungry and eat honey. This does not happen in Minnesota.
You want the queen to keep laying eggs at a good rate so there are lots of young healthy bees in the hive. These are the bees that will survive to next spring. The more survivors the faster spring build up will be. By feeding you can simulate the late season nectar flow.
You may want to feed pollen patties to help keep the queen stimulated. You must have balance nectar and pollen flow to stimulate egg laying. Hive beetles love pollen patties for their egg laying. Only put enough patty in the hive on the top bars above the brood for 5-7 days of bee food. The hive beetle egg hatches in 11 days. The bees will eat the hive beetle eggs because they are pure protein.
You don’t want to over feed the bee colony. The syrup will be place in the brood area as the queen slows down egg laying. If syrup comes in too fast the queen will be “drowned out” as far as egg laying. She will think the hive is full of food. Stop laying eggs. And then SWARM!
If the feeder is emptied in one day or less, wait one day before refilling it. If it takes 2 days to empty wait 2 days. If it takes 3 days wait 3 days. The nurse bees will then have time to use the newest honey close to the brood area as larval food, keeping the brood area from being flooded with unripened honey.