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Chronological Thread  
  • From: <rjarnts AT att.net>
  • To: "'Randall Austin'" <ra41717 AT gmail.com>, "'Joan Kalnitsky'" <jkalnits AT embarqmail.com>, "'Orange Co Beekeepers'" <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] help with feeding
  • Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2015 10:57:54 -0400

Randall (and anyone else who cares to reply), If a candy board/pollen feeding is not helpful for a weak colony because it may produce brood the colony is unable to support through winter, when is it helpful to the colony to use a candy board? I have a very strong colony (lots of bees, good brood, and lots  of honey) and would like to keep them that way over the winter.  Per my awesome mentor (David Langham) there are very adequate honey stores to feed through the winter.  Will a strong colony benefit from a candy board or pollen feeding?  Thanks for considering this question.  Jeanne

 

From: ocba [mailto:ocba-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Randall Austin
Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2015 3:00 PM
To: Joan Kalnitsky; Orange Co Beekeepers
Subject: Re: [ocba] help with feeding

 

Joan,

The article <here> answers a lot of questions about feeding.

In my opinion, it is too late in the year to try to significantly boost a colony's population by feeding protein (pollen or pollen substitute). All that extra brood will freeze to death because there aren't enough nurse bees to cover them.

It is not a bad thing to not have much brood right now, as long as you have a sufficient number of bees to form an adequate winter cluster. A well-behaved queen will be slowing down egg-laying significantly as we approach winter.

How many bees are in the weak hive -- how many frames are covered with bees? You may have plenty enough. You shouldn't have nearly as many as a strong spring hive. But if you think the colony is a lost cause, combining this hive with the other one is a good plan, as described in the article <here>. Or if the other hive is really strong and the weak one isn't too weak, you could swap a frame of capped brood and/or shake a few frames of bees from the strong one to the weak one. There's no point in throwing good resources after bad, but if just a bit of a boost would make all the difference between success and failure then this would be a good approach.

Randall

On 10/11/2015 2:27 PM, Joan Kalnitsky wrote:

We are first year bee keepers with 2 hives.  One is doing great and has from the beginning.  The other went queenless for a wile back in August.  Just as we were giving up hope we saw we had a new queen and things looked good.  Two weeks later we peeked in and things were progressing well.  We have not been able to get into our hives for some time due to travel, family and weather and peeked in today.  The hive that has had the issues once again is looking very week.  There are lots of stores, very little brood, but we did see the queen.
  We are wondering if we should feed and if so should we feed syrup water or protein?
  If we start feeding now will we have to do so through the winter.  At last weeks meeting we heard all about the candy board, is this an opportunity to use it?
  Thanks in advance for your help.
  Joan and Korinn




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