BBC recommend open feeding...

[BigAshW]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-68935866.amp

Possibly Might be easier if us beekeepers just monitored and fed our bees accordingly I'm possibly being a bit harsh but losing colonies to starvation is beekeeper error imo and would also question if the bees can't get out to forage how are they to get out to these shallow bowls of sugar syrup that everyone should be putting out?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

nothing but trying to get his five minutes of fame whilst also blaming someone else for his own incompetence. What an absolute trumpet!

 

[JamezF]

So many confused messages in that piece, too. Not to mention the plain incorrect.

James

 

[user 819]

Agree even in the wettest of winter /spring that we are seeing, it is an inept beek who allows starvation or doesn't recognise they are short of stores. Not hard to give a slab of fondant to keep them going.
Hefting is easy to carry out to assess colony lightness and most will have had a quick five mins to be able to dive in to check stores properly.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

you can understand a beekeeper running a load of hives sometimes getting caught out, but someone with only five hives losing four.
I bet, as well it may not have been starvation but just p!ss poor beekeeping in general.

 

[pargyle]

Agree even in the wettest of winter /spring that we are seeing, it is an inept beek who allows starvation or doesn't recognise they are short of stores. Not hard to give a slab of fondant to keep them going.
Hefting is easy to carry out to assess colony lightness and most will have had a quick five mins to be able to dive in to check stores properly.

I think we sometimes measure the average UK hobby beekeeper by the yardstick of the enligthened and informed beekeepers we see on this forum. I have to say that my experience of talking to many time served beekeepers, in the wider beekeeping world that I've come across, rather indicates that there is a woeful lack of 'thinking' and a great deal of following the methods and rules they were taught years ago. Sadly, a lot of misinformed people continue to pass on information that is fundamentally flawed.

By the time warnings come out about starvation it will probably be too late for a lot of colonies. The fact that we see significant losses over winter is an indication (IMO) of inadequate beekeeping.

We all get caught out sometimes - different colonies consume stores at different rates and a day or two without stores and without foraging weather can be the death knell of a colony that has survived winter.

To lose 10% of your colonies is sad - if they starved we can kick ourselves. To lose 4 out of 5 colonies to starvation I would have to seriously question what the beekeeper did (or didn't do) to allow this to occur. To then go on and suggest people should be putting out bowls of sugar water 'to feed our starving bees' perhaps confirms that the beekeeper involved is not one that has put a great deal of thought or effort into his beekeeping !

 

[SWEET]

One of reasons people need to stop posting tons of messages (over the past months) regards checking/fiddling with bees too early and waiting till they become a box of dead bees or full of swarm cells. Better to check from March onwards by opening the stocks than leaving them to die rather than being reliant on hefting alone. I'd opened and covered extensive work/tasks over the past 3 months in dire weather, the bees are just fine. Had I not covered those tasks i'd have lost far more than five (i've lost none).

I'd started drone rearing in March!

 

[pargyle]

One of reasons people need to stop posting tons of messages (over the past months) regards checking/fiddling with bees too early and waiting till they become a box of dead bees or full of swarm cells. Better to check from March onwards by opening the stocks than leaving them to die rather than than being reliant on hefting. I'd opened and covered extensive work/tasks over the past 3 months in dire weather, the bees are just fine. Had I not covered those tasks i'd have lost far more than five (i've lost none).

I'd started drone rearing in March!

It's a fine line ... you can tell a lot about a colony from the landing board, a clear crownboard, the inspection board and hefting (or weighing regularly if you lack confidence or ability). There really is no reason to be opening colonies up and going through them frame by frame at a time when, as far as the bees are concerned, they are still in winter.

If you suspect they are light on stores a quickly placed slab of fondant under the crownboard or in a container over the feed hole (in a well insulated hive) will not harm them and takes seconds but, if you are suggesting full inspections, taking frames out and looking for brood/queen cells/eggs/disease etc. early in the season then I fear you are not helping your bees.

You might have got lucky but you can't measure how much damage that can be done or at the best how far you set them back by interfering too early. Misguided advice if that is what you are suggesting,

 

[SWEET]

It's a fine line ... you can tell a lot about a colony from the landing board, a clear crownboard, the inspection board and hefting (or weighing regularly if you lack confidence or ability). There really is no reason to be opening colonies up and going through them frame by frame at a time when, as far as the bees are concerned, they are still in winter.

If you suspect they are light on stores a quickly placed slab of fondant under the crownboard or in a container over the feed hole (in a well insulated hive) will not harm them and takes seconds but, if you are suggesting full inspections, taking frames out and looking for brood/queen cells/eggs/disease etc. early in the season then I fear you are not helping your bees.

You might have got lucky but you can't measure how much damage that can be done or at the best how far you set them back by interfering too early. Misguided advice if that is what you are suggesting,

To be very clear -

Quick check of the outer frames is all that is needed to check food, full inspections if anything catches your eye (i'd added overwintered queens 6+ weeks ago to drone layers or Q- stocks) that were strong and would have perished.

Unsure regards luck, i've tons of stocks with 2 + supers currently and my nucs looked like this (4 weeks ago) - II Queens for ref.

Could have easily started grafting 4 weeks ago but held off as lab not fully completed regards kit.

 

[pargyle]

To be very clear -

Quick check of the outer frames is all that is needed to check food, full inspections if anything catches your eye (i'd added overwintered queens 6+ weeks ago to drone layers or Q- stocks) that were strong and would have perished.

Unsure regards luck, i've tons of stocks with 2 + supers currently and my nucs looked like this (4 weeks ago) - II Queens for ref.

Could have easily started grafting 4 weeks ago but held off as lab not fully completed regards kit.

View attachment 39775

To be clear - that's not what you said .. "One of reasons people need to stop posting tons of messages (over the past months) regards checking/fiddling with bees too early".

I still think that opening up to check for stores is completely unnecessary ... unless you are incapable of hefting or haven't bothered to weigh them through the winter.

 

[Mint Bee]

so @SWEET you are telling us that you have been conducting full frame inspections from March (as would usually be carried out for a spring disease check) or lifting the odd frame?

 

[SWEET]

To be clear - that's not what you said .. "One of reasons people need to stop posting tons of messages (over the past months) regards checking/fiddling with bees too early".

I still think that opening up to check for stores is completely unnecessary ... unless you are incapable of hefting or haven't bothered to weigh them through the winter.

Fiddling is the the word I see bandied around, unless the weather is in the extreme they can be opened and issues rectified quickly without issue. Hefting can catch you out, good example being poly nucs and mixed kit. They can feel fine but actually contain 6 frames of capped brood and rammed with bees, next to another with plenty of stores a frame or two of capped brood and far less bees.

 

[pargyle]

Fiddling is the the word I see bandied around, unless the weather is in the extreme they can be opened and issues rectified quickly without issue. Hefting can catch you out, good example being poly nucs and mixed kit. They can feel fine but actually contain 6 frames of capped brood and rammed with bees, next to another with plenty of stores a frame or two of capped brood and far less bees.

But what issues apart from a lack of stores can you amend/rectify at that time of the year. Queen not laying ? Well - some queens don't lay that early in the season. MIssing queen ? How will you know without searching for her - and even if she is not there, where are you going to get another ? Small or dwindling colony ? What are you going to do - open up a healthy big colony and tip them in ?

You are encouraging people to fiddle with their bees early in the season - perhaps it works for you, if you can't be confident hefting and can't resist the curiosity of seeing what they might be up to but .... as a general rule .. fiddling with bees early in the year is not a good idea. If they are doomed - they are doomed. If they need feeding you should know your bees well enough to be able to tell and do something without tearing them apart.

My view - unless you can do something about what you find then leave them be,

 

[SWEET]

But what issues apart from a lack of stores can you amend/rectify at that time of the year. Queen not laying ? Well - some queens don't lay that early in the season. MIssing queen ? How will you know without searching for her - and even if she is not there, where are you going to get another ? Small or dwindling colony ? What are you going to do - open up a healthy big colony and tip them in ?

You are encouraging people to fiddle with their bees early in the season - perhaps it works for you, if you can't be confident hefting and can't resist the curiosity of seeing what they might be up to but .... as a general rule .. fiddling with bees early in the year is not a good idea. If they are doomed - they are doomed. If they need feeding you should know your bees well enough to be able to tell and do something without tearing them apart.

My view - unless you can do something about what you find then leave them be,

As a professional you can fix any issues you find (earlier the better) and certainly not doomed. Missing queens are easy to spot (drones/bee behaviour) replaced with a bank of winter queens in quads. Small stocks, combined and queen stored or destroyed (dependant on xyz) or balanced* with the apiary stocks (depending on resource (those large healthy hives)) they might have disease so off into the lab for further work . Come May (now) you're well ahead of the work with lots of apiaries in the same state. You mention queens not laying, they should by March unless her spermatheca is empty or sex alleles lack diversity and the workers kill her brood. Maybe a late supersedure and you have a virgin running about, easy to spot/sort.

*great swarm control

The hobby beekeeper can learn and cover these tasks but if they are terrified to try, well they never will.

On a side note -

https://www.nationalbeeunit.com/ass...ctice_guidelines/BPG_6_Spring_Checks_2018.pdf

The NBU apiary team carry out a detailed inspection of all their colonies on the first warm days in late February or early March but will postpone if the weather is bad (bad being very bad).

PS. Tearing them apart ? - throughout the year most inspections a couple of frames are moved, no need to keep going through each box (7 days between visits), after 1000's of inspections it becomes very clear when they need a deeper look.

Cheers : )

 

[pargyle]

My inspections, all the year round, tend to be as low impact as possible and I agree that you should know your bees sufficiently to be able to know when you need to look a bit further into the box - and I don't think it, necessarily, will take 1000's of inspections to reach that level of competence. But ... and it's a BIG but... there are a lot of beekeepers who still believe that an inspection needs to hunt down the queen, inspect every frame in minute detail, at every inspection... and it is the influence on those people that drives my concerns that we should not be encouraging early inspections and certainly NOT in depth inspections or fiddling out of curiosity.

You, clearly, have the resources where you can, in some cases, resolve some issues that you may identify at an early time of the year, but the average beekeeper does not. If you know you cannot resolve an issue, then it is just fiddling for the sake of fiddling.

The biggest killers of colonies over winter are ineffective control of varroa late in the season and before the winter bees are laid up and a lack of sufficient stores in the hive to see the colony through. The former is not going to be easy to resolve in February - even if you know about it - the latter is easy - if there is any doubt about the level of stores and you lack the experience to determine if the stores in the hive are sufficient, then a slab of fondant, without an invasive inspection, is an easy fix.

As for advice from the NBU .. whilst I am reluctant (not being a proper beekeeper) to suggest that such an august body would offer lousy advice - when you read further into their recommendations you come across this particular advice in regard to their suggested inspections in February or March:

National Bee Unit
"APHA, National Agri-Food Innovation Campus
Sand Hutton, York. YO41 1LZ
Telephone 03003030094 email [email protected] NBU Web site: www.nationalbeeunit.com
June 2018
©Crown copyright. This sheet, excluding the logo, may be reproduced free of charge providing that it is reproduced accurately
and not used in a misleading way. The material must be acknowledged
Spring Clean
When you are doing spring checks it is a good time to do some spring cleaning such
as scraping the top bars and crown board free of brace comb and other detritus.
Better still clean the top bars and put the frames and bees into a clean hive on a
clean floor board. If you do not have much spare equipment you can scrape out and
lightly scorch the old hive and then use it for the next colony change. You may need
to scrape the floors and collect the debris into bags for Tropilaelaps or cSHB cheks
by the NBU. At the time of writing these will only be for sentinel apiaries agreed by
the NBU"

There are other suggestions in their pamphlet that I would take issue with as well ...I'm not a fan of shook swarms and as far as I know the Small Hive Beetle has not yet got as far as the UK (and the pamphlet stems from 2018 so it's not appeared in the last 6 years either !).

In the light of this advice I'm not sure they are the best source of good information ...

 

[SWEET]

Morning, thanks for the reply.

My inspections, all the year round, tend to be as low impact as possible and I agree that you should know your bees sufficiently to be able to know when you need to look a bit further into the box - and I don't think it, necessarily, will take 1000's of inspections to reach that level of competence. But ... and it's a BIG but... there are a lot of beekeepers who still believe that an inspection needs to hunt down the queen, inspect every frame in minute detail, at every inspection... and it is the influence on those people that drives my concerns that we should not be encouraging early inspections and certainly NOT in depth inspections or fiddling out of curiosity.

I'm sure at some point it clicks and they realise there is little point in hunting down the queen each visit. I would argue they may well need to inspect in minute detail. They could be currently battling EFB or be surrounded by hives festering away, in that case it's vital to run deep inspections throughout. There is a post on here that EFB is already doing the rounds sadly.

You, clearly, have the resources where you can, in some cases, resolve some issues that you may identify at an early time of the year, but the average beekeeper does not. If you know you cannot resolve an issue, then it is just fiddling for the sake of fiddling.

All cases/issues* this year, I don't like leaving hives to die as it then creates a whole load of other work/risk further down the line. One or two dead hives is grim, 30 to sort is nasty (and depressing) work. Again I'd argue the average beekeepers skills should be around this level or could be with a bit of effort.

* not this winter but previous years i've transferred hives into a nuc which then went on to become very good stocks (you could dummy down the hive but moving them takes minutes) - December for ref and little to no brood around then.

The biggest killers of colonies over winter are ineffective control of varroa late in the season and before the winter bees are laid up and a lack of sufficient stores in the hive to see the colony through. The former is not going to be easy to resolve in February - even if you know about it - the latter is easy - if there is any doubt about the level of stores and you lack the experience to determine if the stores in the hive are sufficient, then a slab of fondant, without an invasive inspection, is an easy fix.

For me it's been either poor queens or missed late supersedures not varroa. Slab of fondant can be an easy fix if done correctly, if you not it'll kill the hive. How many people have multi crown boards sat on the hive and place the slab over the QX rather than frames (and cluster where it's needed) and you still have to open the hive. I reckon most people covering this off the first time end up killing the bees anyway.

NBU stuff

I'm not going into this in detail as work with them but will say they are trying to cover a lot of bases and help a vast audience, their apiary site (and bees) are first class and worth a visit. Personally I don't cover all those tasks but do exchange floors Feb/March, takes seconds and the contents can be a good steer without taking the roof off.

Yeah drop the proper beekeeper stuff or i'll stop replying.

Cheers

 

[pargyle]

Morning, thanks for the reply.


I'm sure at some point it clicks and they realise there is little point in hunting down the queen each visit. I would argue they may well need to inspect in minute detail. They could be currently battling EFB or be surrounded by hives festering away, in that case it's vital to run deep inspections throughout. There is a post on here that EFB is already doing the rounds sadly.


All cases/issues* this year, I don't like leaving hives to die as it then creates a whole load of other work/risk further down the line. One or two dead hives is grim, 30 to sort is nasty (and depressing) work. Again I'd argue the average beekeepers skills should be around this level or could be with a bit of effort.

* not this winter but previous years i've transferred hives into a nuc which then went on to become very good stocks (you could dummy down the hive but moving them takes minutes) - December for ref and little to no brood around then.


For me it's been either poor queens or missed late supersedures not varroa. Slab of fondant can be an easy fix if done correctly, if you not it'll kill the hive. How many people have multi crown boards sat on the hive and place the slab over the QX rather than frames (and cluster where it's needed) and you still have to open the hive. I reckon most people covering this off the first time end up killing the bees anyway.


I'm not going into this in detail as work with them but will say they are trying to cover a lot of bases and help a vast audience, their apiary site (and bees) are first class and worth a visit. Personally I don't cover all those tasks but do exchange floors Feb/March, takes seconds and the contents can be a good steer without taking the roof off.

Yeah drop the proper beekeeper stuff or i'll stop replying.

Cheers

Well ...I think we can agree on some things ... most things in terms of our respective beekeeping (and I genuinely don't consider myself to be a 'proper' beekeeper - a thinking one perhaps and successful within what I do as a hobbyist) but when you talk to a lot of small time, hobbyist, beekeepers there is an emerging pattern that they tend to follow what has been taught to them - and never question why or what they are doing. People on this forum often arrive here seeking advice when what has happened to their bees is beyond their ability to identify and nine times out of ten the situation is self inflicted, interference in the bees natural ability to thrive has been disrupted.

I'm not suggesting colonies should be left totally to their own devices but, as you acknowledge, less invasive inspections are what we should strive for - only delving further into the hive when there is a reason identified and further action is feasible.

We see it on here very often - new and not so new beekeepers that make life difficult for their bees with fundamental errors - often things promoted by our National Association, Beginners courses and - if you take the NBU literally - the NBU.

I would rather see people guided towards a course of action that is likely to be less damaging to their colonies than encourage them to embark on something that may be unnecessary and result in something detrimental that, at the time, cannot easily be rectified. For instance - dragging frames out (in poor weather) in haste, breaking up the brood nest that is often well sealed with wax and propolis and in their desire to move quickly, accidentally killing the queen ! When leaving things until it's warmer and inspections can be a more relaxed event would make no difference.

I understand that you, as an experienced and larger scale beekeeper, have the skills and knowledge to carry out early inspections - you admit these are light touch - and the resources to do something about what you find.

However, put yourself in the shoes of the average British beekeeper with, probably, less than 10 hives .. If they follow a path that includes good preparation in the autumn for their colonies in the coming winter, recognise weaker colonies going into winter and combine where necessary, weigh or get used to hefting colonies as winter progresses, invest in clear crownboards and insulation, then their colonies should not need opening up in February to 'check'. Yes - if they have underestimated the stores necessary - they will need feeding but that should be the exception rather than the rule and feeding fondant does not require disturbing the winter nest to any extent.

If some of us offer caution (and I'm not alone) about fiddling with colonies early in the year it's because, most of the time, it's a safe option for the vast majority of beekeepers when inspecting is not an essential requirement. There is a lot to commend the adage that you should leave your bees alone until it's warm enough to inspect them in shorts and a t-shirt (perhaps a bit extreme but the gist is there !).

 

[Newbeeneil]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-68935866.amp

Possibly Might be easier if us beekeepers just monitored and fed our bees accordingly I'm possibly being a bit harsh but losing colonies to starvation is beekeeper error imo and would also question if the bees can't get out to forage how are they to get out to these shallow bowls of sugar syrup that everyone should be putting out?

I like to think I’m a reasonably good beekeeper and can heft pretty well but this year I have had 6 or 7 very strong hives starve. I was feeding fondant which they were consuming rapidly. They hefted ok and I was very aware that I did not want to crowd the queen’s laying.
When I inspected I realised the reason they hefted so well was because they had 11 frames of sealed brood and were crammed with bees which were now piled on the floor.
I held off inspecting because of the chilly weather but wish I had gone in earlier.

 

[pargyle]

I like to think I’m a reasonably good beekeeper and can heft pretty well but this year I have had 6 or 7 very strong hives starve. I was feeding fondant which they were consuming rapidly. They hefted ok and I was very aware that I did not want to crowd the queen’s laying.
When I inspected I realised the reason they hefted so well was because they had 11 frames of sealed brood and were crammed with bees which were now piled on the floor.
I held off inspecting because of the chilly weather but wish I had gone in earlier.

How long had you been feeding them fondant ? Did they actually starve because they ran out of fondant ? It's surprising they had that much brood early in the season ...or was this later on - end March - April ?

I have seen colonies develop rapidly once pollen becomes available - usually once the early tree blossom or rape is in blossom and then, a short spell of foul weather, lack of stores, as they have all been used up brood rearing, leaves them without anything and they are gone in just a couple of days. In these cases it's easy to get caught out - more so if they are out apiaries and only getting weekly or even less frequent visits.

 

[Newbeeneil]

I've probably been feeding them a Kilo of fondant a week since the start of April. I realised there was little forage and limited chance to get any available due to the weather so they were building up very fast and just l caught me out. 3 other colonies were almost dead when I opened them but I managed to revive the bulk of the bees with a spray of syrup on the comb but most of the slabs of brood was dead. A subsequent inspection shows that I saved 2 of the queens.
I agree that if the hives were in my garden I would likely have noticed earlier but looking after 90+hives over 17 Apiaries make more than weekly visits difficult.
In my 10 years of keeping bees I have never seen colonies so strong so early in my apiaries.