Smallholders Insurance from Greenlands

Author Topic: Feeding/preparing a neuc for winter?  (Read 2411 times)

County Dangler

  • Joined Aug 2013
Feeding/preparing a neuc for winter?
« on: October 07, 2014, 12:07:43 pm »
I'm hoping for a bit of advice with regards to winterising my bee's. About 6 weeks ago a picked up a 7 frame Neuc from a well established bee keeper. My first ever bee's! I've done a course but had never been within a hundred meters of a hive. I transferred them a brood box with a frame of foundation either side and a dummy board. After leaving them to settle for a couple of weeks they seem pretty happy, with plenty of bee's coming and going, returning with plenty of ivy pollen.



I've done a couple of inspections now and they are very chilled, so chilled that I've only been wearing a smock with shorts and flip flops and no gloves or smoke. I've seen the queen and there is plenty of brood in various stages. I also noticed a few of the tell tale red spots so have given them a varroa treatment with icing sugar, which I'm much happier with then using any chemicals. They have started drawing out comb in both of the empty frames, both of which are around a 1/3 full of stores.

Now it's feeding which I'm not sure about. I bought a 4 pint rapid feeder last week and put a pint of 2:1 sugar syrup in to see how they got on and when I went to check them yesterday it was bone dry, so I'll make a 3 pint mix up for them this afternoon. I gather they will ant feeding all winter and guess I would use ambrosia for this? If so, when do you stop the syrup and go over to ambrosia? and how much will they need over winter? Also, what shall I feed them out of? an ice cream container?

Also is there anything else I should be doing to help them over winter? I'll be ratchet strapping them up but other then that?


Laurieston

  • Joined May 2009
  • Northern Germany
Re: Feeding/preparing a neuc for winter?
« Reply #1 on: October 09, 2014, 08:02:37 pm »
Hello Country Angler, (nice name by the way), and great picture of the girls at work.

I too am currently feeding my bees, I mix 1kg white sugar with 500mg hot (but not boiling) water and stir it until disolved.  The drink (?) this down in a few days and then I give another.  I will do this for the next couple of weeks and then stop.  Last autumn I continued feeding until they stopped taking up the mixture.  I feed in an ice-cream container with straw pressed into the liquid.  This seems to provide them with something to climb up and down on, otherwise they tend to drown easily.  I have read ideas about how much they need to be fed, but I guess it depends on how much they have stored up themselves.  Can you contact the Beekeeper from whom you got them?

Over winter I will not feed them at all, unless I work out what 'hefting' is all about.  This is the idea that you can tell when they run out of food by lifting the hive a little and feeling if it is too light - indicating not enough food left.  Opening the hive deep in winter is not recommended, too cold for the girls, so only do that in emergency.

I will probably also treat for varroa with ant acid (oxcalic acid) after finishing feeding.  This seems to be a compromise between trying to be natural but also controlling the varroa.

I often read a website called Barefood Beekeeper at http://www.biobees.com/index.php.  They are well into keeping bees as naturally and chemically free as possible, with lots of interesing ideas.  Maybe worth a read.

I have had my bees, with more and/or less success for 3 years now, and so enjoy it.  Hope you do to.  Good luck.

Laurieston

HesterF

  • Joined Jul 2012
  • Kent
  • HesterF
Re: Feeding/preparing a neuc for winter?
« Reply #2 on: October 10, 2014, 11:58:10 pm »
It was quite late in the season to start with a nuc so ideally you should have been feeding earlier I think. Hopefully the warm weather will continue long enough for them to build up but I would keep feeding as long as you can - you're a long way short of where they need to be to survive the winter. If you can get inverted sugar syrup, that will make it easier for the bees than straight sugar syrup - isn't ambrosia inverted sugar syrup? They won't be able to use the sugar syrup (inverted or otherwise) once it gets colder and that's when you need to switch to fondant. It has to be warm enough for them to evaporate the water from the syrup if they're to store it. A 'normal' sized colony needs about a brood box FULL of stores to survive the winter - that's about 10kg worth. So you need to get them to take in that much food.

As for varroa, I don't imagine icing sugar will make much impact. I use the MAQ strips which are formic acid. Not entirely sure how you define chemicals really - formic acid is naturally occurring too (it's what ant bites are made of!). But if you've only seen a few mites, you may be OK, it's been a bad year for varroa - I treated in September but was seeing tens/possibly hundreds each two weeks, still no idea whether it'll have worked well enough to knock them back.

Other winter prep - get your mouseguards on and put on wraps or chicken wire to make sure the woodpeckers can't get into the hives. Some put carpet tiles on to help insulation but I found they created damp problems instead last winter so it depends on the winter I think (although a bit late to intervene once you realise it's going to be a cold one!).

 

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