Feeding | Beekeeping in Richmond, Virginia

Michael Bush Agrees With Me…but!

Last month, Michael Bush came to Richmond, Va. Unfortunately, a last minute disaster in my personal life caused me to miss the presentation=( Regardless, I had several folks report to me about his discussion and I was pleased to hear that he mirrored my constant droning on about about don’t feed your bees! It just encourages the weak! Not to be arrogant, but this mirrors the ‘always have a Nuc’ philosophy of mine being mirrored by another prominent beekeeper a few months back. In all honesty, this is not some reflection of my ‘great beekeeping skills’. It is simply a reflection of realizing that keeping bees is like managing a heard of deer on your property. It in no way, or in any way, is similar to keeping cows or chickens. Treating bees like a domesticated animal (in my opinion) is a surefire way to disaster. Don’t medicate. Don’t feed. Don’t requeen. Sure, plant some foraging plants (as you do with any wild heard of deer or maybe some geese), but take it no further. In my opinion, a domesticated bee is an extinct bee.

BUT, it just so happens that there is a caveat to this. Last week, I had a free evening and was able to read a recent ezine from Brushy Mountain and browse some sites from a few of the other beekeepers in the area (at least the ones that I respect.) In both cases, I found articles on feeding bees. I can’t speak for Brushy Mountain (they are, obviously, trying to sell feeders), but I do know that several of the local beekeepers that feed are very successful in their beekeeping endeavors. Although I do not agree with many of the reasons that they feed (and they probably don’t agree with the reasons that I don’t feed), it does make good sense to feed a young colony (or Nuc you plan to overwinter) or a colony that is otherwise strong, but is currently suffering from a big drought. Why?

Feeding now will encourage the queen to start laying a bunch of eggs. I have come to believe that most of your Fat Bees (those are the ones that are born with more ‘fat’ and live through most of the Winter – critical to the survival of any colony) are actually raised in early October (some would say late September, but I no longer believe that, due to things I have seen over the past few years.) When that laying starts (and it ends in November or sooner), you want to have a healthy population of nurse bees ready to help these juggernaut bees get their start in this world. The best way to ensure that you have a healthy population of nurse bees is to feed in late August and into September – but ONLY for the younger hives (my opinion).

Your younger hives (the Nucs for Overwintering) have a queen that was only born in the last month or so. With very little nectar coming in, she is unlikely to be raising many bees. I have actually tested this and it is true. I have two Nucs for Overwintering (out of 12) that I decided NOT to feed just to see. They are not raising near the number of nurse bees that the fed Nucs are raising (and, I only feed them a mix that equals 2 gallons of water to 10 pounds of sugar.) The fed Nucs are raising tons of bees and even drawing wax. I’m not sure if this will mean my ‘unfed’ Nucs will perish or not, but the experiment has started. I vote that they won’t make it, but the daggone bees have surprised me in the past.

What about the mature hives? If you have to feed a mature hive, it is definitely one to consider whacking. Every one of my mature hives (well, every one that I have checked in the last week) has ramped up egg laying. I have not fed them one drop of anything, but they know it is time to prepare. I believe this is part of how the bees with good genes make it – store enough honey to both raise a bunch of bees for the winter AND to eat on through the Winter. If your bees aren’t doing that, I’d whack them unless they were my only hive. If they are the only (or maybe 1 of 2) hive, then I’d simply feed them and whack the queen in late March. You don’t want those genes around, period. It not only will make your beekeeping more labor intensive (and risky), but you are propogating terrible genetics into the area around where you keep your bees – and that’s where your future queens will mate!!!

Feeding Recommendations

I just read an e-zine from Brushy Mountain that encourages everyone to be feeding their bees right now, thanks to the lack of rain and dearth of nectar. If you’re in an area of the country that is experiencing a multi-year, devastating drought (mostly the corn belt, like Iowa), this may be necessary (I have no experience with this kind of scenario in my beekeeping travails), but I do not believe it is necessary in our area (which may experience a month or two of drought in a given Summer.)

Bees are biological organisms, just like deer, birds and other insects. You don’t have to feed those organisms in our droughts and you shouldn’t have to feed your bees, unless you somehow have a genetic derelict in your apiaries. If you do have such a bee, one that cannot survive in our environment without external, man-driven measures, I would argue that you SHOULD let them perish. We do not need that kind of genetics in our area.

This discussion is particularly relevant today, based on the large number of queries that I have received about ‘should I be feeding my bees’ from local beekeepers. Based on my comments above, you might conclude that I never feed my bees. In fact, I do feed some of my bees, but very rarely in August (or July). I am a firm believer in feeding any new colony (caught by a swarm or purchased) until it has drawn out (drawn out refers to the frames of foundation and drawing each out with wax) whatever you consider to be the hive bodies. Drawing out wax takes a tremendous amount of resources and you sometimes get a new hive so late in the nectar flow that they have little chance of drawing out their living quarters before the flow is over (usually in June). To help them over this obstacle, feeding is a good thing. Once they have drawn out their living quarters, there is no natural reason to feed them again (but, I might change my tune if I ever experience a multi-year drought…)

But, do I feed my young hives in July and August? Unfortunately, there is no black-and-white answer to this. In my experience, if I have a young hive that has drawn out the lower hive body (for me, this is usually a Deep super), I will continue to feed in July/August as they finish drawing out the upper hive body (for me, this is typically a Medium super.) As long as I feed late in the day (when most troublesome foragers from other hives are already back home for the day and less likely to smell this new treat as I pour it into the hive), hives of this size have no problems keeping out potential robbers and benefit well from the feed. But, I also have brand new, queenless Nuc’s in my home yard at this time of year. These Nuc’s (for Overwintering) are not expected to fill out a full hive body. Instead, they only need to fill out 10 frames (5 in the lower Nuc and 5 in the upper Nuc.) In addition, in July and August, many of these Nuc’s experience a queenless period as they raise their new queens. I never feed a brand new Nuc that is queenless in July or August. Absolutely never. It seems to me that queenless nuc’s are at the greatest risk of being robbed out during this time of year. In fact, any Nuc has a high chance of being robbed out this time of year, but queenless Nuc’s seem to really be at risk. My goal with these hives is to get a laying queen before I feed and I try to hold off feeding until late August at the earliest.

Finally, I suppose it is possible that you could take too much honey from your hives during the honey harvest and then have to feed to make up for that mistake. I have never done this, so cannot really comment on it. In truth, I checked 3 outyards today and have lots of extra honey, including 1 fully drawn and capped Medium honey super (many of my spare supers are partially drawn and filled, but not capped.) As stated many times before, I definitely believe that you will end up with stronger bees if they are eating nectar-based honey over the Winter, as opposed to syrup-based. It may be the reason why I simply do not have Winter losses.

It should also be noted that:

1. I only use top feeders (see insert) for my full hives. In my opinion, this is the best kind of feeder for a full hive. So, when I am feeding my younger hives in July/August, it is with this kind of feeder. I would never use a boardman-style (or other external) feeder. Having feed hanging off the side of a hive is a big advertisement to other bees in the area.

2. I pretty much feed the same mixture all year. For me, it is basically 10 lbs of sugar mixed with 2 gallons of water. If you go by a ‘pint is a pound the world around’, this comes out to something like a 1.6 parts water to 1 part sugar.

And so the tough season begins…

Based on the last two weeks, the nectar flow has dropped substantially in my areas (eastern Henrico and Charles City County.) I have seen a slight increase happen towards the middle of June in the past, but who knows what this Summer has in store. As I write this, we are finally getting some rain, although not the real soakers that I like. Still, hopefully this will prompt the Summer bloomers to be a bit more productive then normal. The clover has gone crazy and continues to bloom everywhere. Queen Anne’s Lace is also going to town now. Hopefully, this will provide a last shot of honey before the real tough season begins.

On the negative experience front, I lost a ton of honey in a robbing situation. I found 4 hives over the last couple of weeks with queen problems. Two of them had gone so long that the foragers had started laying, which is always a nightmare. I have been really lucky with placing a Nuc on the spot where the hive was and moving the main hive 15 feet away (or more). This has allowed me to save the primary force of bees and then, about 5 days later, combining them back with the main hive. This has worked very successfully 3 times already (I’ve had a few queen problems this year, due to all of the daggone swarming!) In my opinion, the foragers for the main hive end up coming back to the queenright Nuc and they combine naturally. Then, after a few days, the Nuc is so strong that combining them with the (now much reduced, since the foragers have moved to the Nuc) original hive is easy.

This past weekend, I did it on two hive and it cost me a ton of honey. Both of the main hives ended up being robbed substantially. I didn’t care so much about the bees (they were laying workers and only a very few nurse bees), but both hives had a lot of frames of honey that I had planned to use for the Winter Nucs. Clearly, with the flow dropping, more bees are testing the defenses of neighboring hives. This strategy is still a good one, as I did save the foragers and ended up with a fine hive building up as it should. But, I need to take the frames of honey in the future, once we get towards the end of May. Live and learn.

The other two hives I caught in time to drop a frame of eggs from one of my better hives into them and are (hopefully) now building new queens.

There are a couple of things that I have come away with from all of this. For one, my feeding will now take the conservative approach. No more feeding outside of the hives. Only feed late in the evening and only open young/weak hives late in the evening. This also means that most of my inspections now start to happen on a monthly basis, as opposed to every other week. I’ll pretty much just check supers and pull a middle frame from the brood nest to insure there is (or at least was recently) a queen. In all honesty, I have so many hives that capped brood is good enough for me. Plus, I don’t like to do full inspections when the nectar flow drops. Too much fighting when other bees are attracted by the smell of honey!

I have also decided that I will buy a voice recorder for my inspections. Most of my queen problems were easily prevented, but I simply neglected to either note it in my journal or, if I did note it (such as, hive swarmed – check for laying queen in 3 weeks), to come back and check at the right time. I have great notes from the last few years, but not as good this year. My Nuc program and trying to keep up with the honey production (as well as wife and 20 month old) have kept me so busy that I have slacked off of this important task. Again, live and learn!

Maples are Blooming!

Bee On Crocus Bloom in February — Enjoying a little Early Season Forage

The Winter in Richmond, Virginia started out with a sledge hammer but appears to be going out like a tack hammer. It was really rough in December and most of January, but February has been uncharacteristically warm. Today, it appears to be heading into the upper 60’s and I really do not see much real cold in the foreseeable future (plus, we’ve already had nearly two weeks of weather like this!) We will no doubt see more cold weather, but March is just around the corner, which is the start of my favorite time with the bees!

As proof, I was finally rewarded with a few blooms over the past week! The crocuses started blooming around the 10th and I have had a few bees on them. But today, my early Maples started! Whoohoo! The bees have started to work the blooms a bit and I am hoping for a good brood build up. I expect to have a look at some of the hives in the apiary with the sugar syrup tomorrow. They have basically gone through 20 lbs of sugar (or what amounts to about 8 gallons of syrup) over the past two weeks and I am wondering what they are doing with it.

Now is really a good time to get some painting done. I have actually stayed ahead of this chore fairly well since last Fall, with a lot of painted deeps, mediums, shallows and nuc’s to show for it. But, I still have unpainted wooden-ware and now is as good a time as any to get that done, just in case. I am a firm believer in having twice as much as you think you will need and a little extra for any swarms or cut-outs that come along. One of the things that I am working on this weekend is equipment for two trapouts that I will be starting in March. I plan to use these bees to start several Nuc’s, if all goes well, so I want this stuff ready well in advance.

A trapout is mainly used to get the majority of the bees in a feral hive and eventually force the queen to leave the spot, due to no foragers returning. The beekeeper effectively takes most of the bees back to his yards and can then use them to start Nucs with queens from his best lines. The problem with trying this in early March is mainly that the bees will have only just started to grow their populations. So, you really only stand to get a fraction of the bees you might get if you started it in June (when the hive should be at max population.) But, that is all theory. There may be very good reasons to do it in March that I simply do not know since I have never tried it. Come April, I will have the results and it will be another lesson for the bee books!

MegaBee Killer!

Wow, you would think that I would learn.

In my recent feeding, I decided to try the MegaBee again to see if I could give my bees a bit of a leg up during the hot month of August. This time, I increased the Sugar:Water ratio and hoped that it would dissolve a bit better. Well, it definitely did dissolve a bit better. But, the bees are drowning in the stuff like nobody’s business!

Basically, this stuff is definitely not for a top feeder. I cannot say for sure if it is worth a daggone for any kind of feeder, but I do know that I will not use it again in my current feeder setup.

In my weaker hive, I am basically going to have to replace the feeder today. It’s terribly hot, but I have no other choice. It will be good to take a look and see how many frames are being worked on. I am hopeful that I can put my second deep on the weaker hive soon.

Positive Hive Investigations

Although I think the MegaBee set my girls back about a week, things are still positive. Found the queen in both hives and they are both looking good.

Weather: Very windy, in the 80’s, mostly sunny

Hive 2

Working on 5.5 Frames
4 frames of brood with definite honey and pollen around the edges
1.5 frames of solid honey storage, a little bit capped

Hive 1

Bottom Box
5 frames of brood
5 frames of honey and pollen

Top Box
Drawing out a good portion of 4 frames
3 frames have honey, some of it capped – a little bit of pollen

Filled both top feeders on both hives.

And the Beat Goes On…

Weather : Spotty Rain, 70 Degree F

Hive 1 has finished all of the sugar syrup that I gave them and seem to be itching for more. Hive 2, however, has not even touched a drop of the stuff. I have added more syrup to Hive 1 and am waiting until the weekend to determine what the heck is going on with Hive 2. Kenny, a wise Beekeeper at the ERBA, mentioned last February that ‘if you have two hives, one will always be noticeably stronger then the other one – no rhyme or reason.’

This weekend, I will give Hive 2 a full ‘redo’, getting rid of any excess pollen and putting the feeder (after I clean it) directly on top of the box. I also plan to do a thorough inspection of the brood on this hive to see what the heck is going on. On Hive 1, I will mainly add a second brood chamber (or ‘Deep’, as some call it.) I do want to give them a good ‘once over’, as I doubt that I will be looking in that chamber again for a month or so.

On a ‘nectar flow note’, I was walking to my car from work yesterday and noticed a bunch of bees on a small, yellow-blooming tree. Upon closer inspection, this tree appears to be the Golden Rain Tree. Amusingly enough (or sadly enough…), I dumped several seedlings of the Golden Rain Tree last year (or let them die). Now, I see that it could be a very good source of food for my gals. Of course, this whole even took place at Cary and 6th street. There are probably not a lot of options in that area to begin with. Maybe that was the only thing blooming in that area.

Honey Bees Eating Syrup and Another Training Flight!

Although I have been waffling on looking at the hives this weekend, I finally decided to basically let them be with respect to an actual frame inspection. I did, however, observe them externally on several occasions and frequently checked the hive-top feeders that I put on them earlier this week. As always, the two hives are not working at the same rate.

Yesterday, I had checked both hive-top feeders a couple of times. I never noticed any bees eating the syrup. In fact, except for 1 lone bee flying around in the feeder section in Hive 2, I never noticed any bees in the feeder section at all. This all changed today (I wish I had snapped a picture of it.) In Hive 1, the bees were in the feeder entrance thick as flees! In Hive 2, nothing. The more that I read up on feeding, the bees take up the syrup to help them build out more comb. Next weekend, I should see a substantial increase in comb. Hive 2 continues to struggle, at least from external observations.

As a final note, I once again found the bees outside of Hive 1 doing the Training Flights and actually snapped a picture this time. The picture definitely does not do justice to this event. Honey Bees are all over the place, climbing on the front of the brood chamber and flying all about in front of the thing. It appears to be a very positive sign.

Dead Brood & Feeding Issues

Today I decided to put some sugar water on my hives to give them a bit of a leg up. I purchased the Beemaster Top Hive feeder with some Christmas money provided by my family, based on recommendations from the fella at Dadant’s down in Southwest Virginia. I had issues with this, but first an observation.

When I approached Hive 2, I again noticed dead, partially formed brood on the landing area of the bottom board. Since this is the second time that I have found this on this particular hive, I posted some questions and this pic on the Beekeeping Forums. The folks there said this was nothing to be concerned about. In fact, one fella said this was a good sign. Brood dies as part of a regular thing (and the rain flushes we have been getting are a logical reason.) My picture demonstrated that I have good, clean bees that are doing their housekeeping right.

So, this was another bit of info to file away for another day!

Now, back to feeding. I combined equal parts (volume) sugar and water in the morning in a pan on the stove. I covered it and let it sit until lunchtime, when I put the food on the hives.

The first problem that I encountered was the megabee pollen substitute that I put on the hive previously. Bees were all over it and it was difficult to get off of the top board. Once I did this, I placed it directly on top of the frames. This was recommended to me by Wade at my beekeeping club. It seemed to work well. The problem was that I now had to get my hive-top feeder on it. With the pollen, it would not fit down on the hive directly. Finally, I went ahead and put my top-board in between the feeder and the hive. I have since determined that this is a problem, so I will have to figure out what to do with this tomorrow.

As a final note, I also went to put down my entrance reducers. Both Wade and Kenny (from the East Richmond Beekeeper’s group) advised that I should definitely get an entrance reducer on my hives. Feral hives would be working on my small hives when the Nectar Flow drops (as it should over the next month.) Unfortunately, they did not fit exactly (when I put the hives together, it appears that I should have put the entrance reducer in before putting the two side boards on the bottom board.) I will have to address this tomorrow too.

On Entrance Reducers, an experienced beekeeper mentioned that he has come to get absolutely huge hives from people who want to get them out of barns and trees. A lot of time, they all are coming and going through a hole the size of a quarter! His point was that an entrance reducer is fine all of the time. If there is even the slightest risk of robbing, he says you should put her in! More on this tomorrow.

Food!

Today was my monthly beekeeping meeting and it was extremely beneficial. But, before I record these notes, I must comment on the one check I made of the hives today. I only had a couple of minutes between work and the meeting, but something had been nagging me the whole day. The pollen that I placed on the hives last night was a little damp. I had simply placed it directly on the top board, without anything between it and the particle board that makes up the center of the top board. As I contemplated this during the day, I kept thinking that this was only damaging the board and that I need to move it to a small plate that I would sneak out of the kitchen so the wifee wouldn’t know about it.

Feeding pollen to my bees the first time

Well, I took two plates out to the hives and opened the top off of Hive 1. There must have been a hundred bees all over that pollen! They were going to town on it. Usually, I might have 6 or 7 bees between the cover and the top board. Now, there were a hundred and more! Needless to say, I left the girls alone and departed for the bee meeting. Moving this stuff onto a plate was not going to be a quick thing, as expected.

The bee meeting focused on Honey Extraction, but I picked up several useful tips in other areas from both the speaker and chatting with folks after the meeting. What follows are my notes:

Honey Extraction : When you do this, which most folks with established hives are doing now through July, you only want to use the frames that are 80% full (both sides) of capped honey. The rest is nectar and will mainly dilute your honey. The best honey has about 18.4% moisture, so you do not want a lot of nectar (which is nearly 95% moisture!)

Also, once you extract the honey, put the empty (but still dripping with some honey) in an empty box above the main hive. In a day or two, the bees will come up and pull all of that honey out and put it in their stores. It’s the best way to clean honey frames.

Nectar Flow: It turns out that bees will typically completely ignore both feed (Sugar Water) and honey during the nectar flow. This very much explains my experience with the spilled honey in mid to late May. I put some honey that had spilled on the floor on both of my hives. The bees pretty much ignored it (a couple of bees appeared to drown in it, actually!) Now, this activity makes perfect sense. The Nectar Flow (Spring) was on and they were busy at work.

The fella that gave the talk mentioned that this year was not a good nectar flow for his area (coastal Virginia). In fact, he was pretty sure it was over. Kenny, a wise member of our group, said ours was still on, but it was dwindling. It appears that early to mid-June marks the end of our Nectar flow.

When the Nectar Flow is on (Spring or Fall), the speaker hardly bothers his bees at all. He might lift the top cover to see what they are doing, but he does not smoke them or break the hive apart. This is the time that they need to be working 100% and any setback is not good. Another good tip to remember.

9 Frame Strategy: The speaker likes to use 9 frames in his honey supers. The bees will draw them out further and fill them with more honey. There were a couple of very important tangents to this advice.

1. When you do the 9 Frame Strategy, always start with 10 frames. Remove one later on, otherwise the bees (when started with 9 frames) will build comb all over the place (burr comb is an example.)

2. You want your 10 frame setup to be 10 frames pushed close together. They should, in fact, be touching. This will leave space to either side. This is a big lesson for me. When I first picked up my hives, the sequence went like this :

a. I went to my provider around 2 pm and brought a brood chamber full of frames.
b. We took 4 or 5 of his frames and put them in the brood chamber.
c. I returned at 8 pm to get my brood chamber and take them home

The problem with this was that I never opened them after putting the nuc’s in them. This meant that they were jostled on the ride back (and me carrying them around.) Needless to say, on my first inspection, they were not snug together and there was comb everywhere. I have still not rectified this, but Kenny advises this is something for me to do in the Winter, when I need to add a new Brood chamber for the bees to work. When I do it, put a Queen excluder between the boxes and the Queen will stop laying in the lower or upper chamber.

This gives me a chance to clean up the frames some, which I will have to do later this year.

Food: With the Spring Nectar Flow waning, I definitely should be feeding my bees, according to Kenny. I need to get my top feeders going tomorrow, if possible. Wade, another member of the Bee Group, advised that it’s a good idea to always do this with new or small hives. If they need it, they will use it. If Nectar is available, they will ignore it.

The sequence, according to Wade, is to put the pollen right on top of the frames. Remove the top board and put the feeder on top of the brood chamber. Finally, put the cover on (you do not need the cover in this setup.)

Ventilation: It is very smart to get some ventilation on your hive to help them keep the hive from overheating and it helps with curing honey (the bees rely on the flow of air to make this easier.) Wade said to drill a hole and cover it with number 8 hardware cloth. Kenny said to just put something about a quarter of an inch wide on top of the top cover ridge and rest the cover on it. Right now is a good time to do this.