Last year I overfed my bees in summer and had to remove frames of stores as there was so little room left for the queen to lay. I use 10 frame dadant and currently have 3 thriving full hives, one nuc from a split and two caught swarms. There is very little forage around at present and the bees have few stores. As a rough guide how much syrup should I give? They seemed to just keep on taking it down until the brood boxes were choked with it last year.
Advice re feeding
- Thread starter haisebees
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Check each week that there are about the equivalent of two full frames of stores; any more and laying space may be reduced, as last year; weak syrup will keep the queen laying, heavy syrup is for winter stores. Single brood Dadants? Supers empty?
OP
Single brood 10 frame dadant. Supers almost empty....they've got their heads in the cells. Virtually no stores in brood boxes. I looked yesterday and made syrup to put on today when i expect the supers will be empty as well. Blackberry and some trees due to flower here any day now. Incidentally I did get a good crop of well capped honey in early May. maybe I should have left more on the hives but at that stage they had good stores in the brood boxes as well. it seems I make a different mistake every year and this is my 8th or 9th year.
OP
Also I had to go away last week so there was 12 days between inspections.
OP
Success so far.....fed two hives and left partially filled supers on the others. nAll good now and we are just going into blackberry and acacia time so should be okay for food for a week or two
