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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Thomas Grizzle <griz AT mindspring.com>
  • Cc: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Feeding - Sugar Concentration
  • Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 13:05:48 -0400

Tom,

Most books typically call for one part water, one part sugar in the spring (with a new package/nuc) and one part water, two parts sugar in the fall. The "parts" can be figured based on either weight or volume; the result works either way. It is close enough to mix "one-to-one" using one 4- or 5-pound bag of sugar to 2 quarts water.

The reason for the difference is that the spring feeding is intended to stimulate brood-rearing & wax production and the fall feeding is supposed to be nearer "storage ready", easier to pack away for winter.

The thinner spring feeding (50/50) is more like natural nectar, and is also the concentration that bees will dilute honey to before consuming. By mimicking a nectar flow, the queen & bees respond by raising more brood (assuming they also have pollen). They also need a real or artificial nectar flow to stimulate wax production in their wax glands. Many nectars are thinner than 50/50 (that is fairly rich), so you may want to feed a syrup that's a bit thinner. I've seen people recommend two parts water to one part sugar in the spring. But if it is too thin, it won't be attractive to the bees. Experiment.

For feeding heavy syrup in the fall, 2 parts sugar to 1 part water is around the limit that sugar will easily go into solution. If you go much higher than that, the sugar will settle out rather than truly dissolving. I make my fall syrup as heavy as I can get it, and 2:1 seems the ballpark for maximum sustainable solubility. This concentration is 66% sugar, which is a lot closer to the bees' storage target of 82% sugar than the 1:1 mix. You are doing some of the work for them.

You don't have to actually measure these amounts -- the concentrations aren't critical. But the relative concentrations should be appropriate for the intended goals.

To address your specific case --- if you still have foundation that needs to be drawn, feeding a thin syrup is a good strategy. If you have drawn comb but don't have very much stored "honey" in the hive, feeding a heavy syrup will get the most food in there the fastest. But if you've got all the drawn comb you need and enough stored food to last through our summer nectar dearth, then you don't need to give artificial food. The asters and goldenrod should explode in our area in September, and in a normal year they provide plenty of honey to over-winter our bees.

Does this help?

Randall Austin


On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 8:52 AM, Thomas Grizzle <griz AT mindspring.com> wrote:

Hey Y’all,

 

I established one hive in Chapel Hill back in April and things are progressing nicely.  I got a few pounds of bees and a caged queen from Busy Bee and set them into a new 10-frame Langstroth brood chamber with all new foundation.  They immediately started drawing out the comb and I could tell that my population got much larger, and by now, >2 months later, it is rockin’.  When I first set the bees into the hive I put a top feeder on and gave them the equivalent of 10 pounds of sugar in two feedings about a week apart.  Then I stopped feeding them because I perceived that there was a lot of food and that good bees should be out looking for it.  About 1 month into it, I put a second brood chamber on top of the first, then a medium super on top of that. 

 

I had not fed them for a while, but yesterday I noticed a lot of bees just hanging out on the “runway” not moving much, which to my small mind meant they lacked energy and might be hungry.  So I gave them a quart of 1:2 sugar water.  They swarmed all over the thing, seemed to really like it.  This got me thinking, conventional wisdom is 1:2 in Spring, 1:1 sugar water in Fall.  Given I have loaded these bees with 30 frames of foundation to draw out, why not give them 1:1 sugar water to speed things along?  What is the rationale/wisdom behind this difference in sugar concentration at different times of the year, and what if I break with “tradition” and give the “wrong” concentration at other times of the year?  What are the potential consequences?

 

Thanks, y’all!

 

Tom


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