Can we or can we not feed soy flour?

[Finman]

That's brutal! Finnie also says use good queens and choose your forage with care. More food for thought and not just pollen patties!

Yes. Patty feeding helps to get early yields, and I can help weak colonies with extra brood frames. When colony starts brooding, those first two weeks brood are able to forage 7 weeks later.
It is 1.5 months later from laying.

The most important in good yields are pastures.
.

 

[pargyle]

The most important in good yields are pastures.
.

Exactly, but one of the biggest problems our bees face - which is clearly less evident in Finland - is that we do not have the benefit of the pastureland and wild spaces that you have over there. There is a huge majority of hobby beekeepers on this forum and our apiaries are often urban or semi-rural.

There is a very limited amount of forage available to some and transporting bees hige distances to find (if they can) good forage is not often economic or desirable for the hobby beekeeper. Indeed, a lot of our 'pastureland' is no longe pasture - the hedgerows are depleted, the crops grown are often not good for bees and the pastures that remain for our sheep and cattle are often weeded to the point where there is only grass remaining. If you go to places like East Anglia there are ploughed fields for as far as the eye can see - no hedgerows - and growing ceral crops or sugar beet - some of our beekeepers in that location only have any sort of a flow when OSR is planted or field beans.

The 'lucky' ones are those that have found apiaries on traditional farms or have access to orchards and/or heather .. but orchards in the UK are becoming a thing of the past and heather can be notoriously fickle in terms of a regular crop.

The meadows and flower gardens of my youth in the 50's and 60's are long gone .. 30% of British front gardens are now paved over - there's a real concern about that. Our skylarks, butterflies and the plethora of wildlife found everywhere in those past days are becoming a thing of the past ... and until this trend is reversed (and I can't see it happening any time soon) good forage for our bees is going to become ever more difficult to find.

You have said, on a number of occasions, that the UK hive density is too high - and I fear that you are going to be proved right. Even with the awful summer we had last year there should have been some honey crop for most beekeepers - yet, in my area, I estimate that over half of the beekeepers I am in contact with had barely enough honey for their own needs and their bees ... let alone a surplus to sell.

You are correct, it's not all about husbandry - the environment plays a huge part in whether bees can create the surplus we all hope for.

 

[Finman]

.
I do not undestand what Pargyle explains.

I have lived in near Helsinki city centre 50 years. If I do not lift my arse from that place, I could not keep bees. Keep bees there where they have pastures. So simple.
I just drove 150 km that I shovel snow away on from of hives. Here is 40 cm snow and water rain.
IT is my habit to spend my free time. Others fly to Madeira or to South Africa. I do not compare what they do. They may go where they want.

I am watching TV. Temp in the room is 5C. I hope that temp rises up to 15C before 24 a'clock. I have 3 electrict heaters and one fire owen. To be every day in Helsinki is boring.
.
.

 

[Finman]

.
IT is very sure, that bees do well without any patty feeding. So do 99% of hives.

But if we think about hobby, and how to get new features to the hobby, and what are limits of bee life science, it is more than interesting to try many things.

To doing new things and learn and read new things teach many new aspects even if they are not very sensible idea. What is wrong in that?

People are very interested about these things, and they are exciting to learn to know and see with own eyes. IT is good too, that guys learn facts along this interesting path.


But what they get now? ... Snake oil. That is food business. 10 fold prices from Sugar. No one says anything about that. When I try to offer scientific facts, every one is poking and hahahahing. That is sick.

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

Winter might be loosening its grip here. 13C and sunny rather than 4C and clear or 8C and rainy forecast for first time in weeks.

 

[Finman]

That's brutal! Finnie also says use good queens and choose your forage with care. More food for thought and not just pollen patties!

Just now in May and June I feed pollen patty to hives . Half of May bees did not fly to willows and Maples to gather pollen. It was windy and rainy. Then patty quarantees, that bees get enough larva juice to brood. I do not stop their natural pollen foraging. The more they get pollen outside, the more they eate patty.

I see the short of protein, when I see that capped brood comb is like shoot with shoot gun. Half of brood is missing.

Apples and dandelions are just now blooming here.

 

[Finman]

So Finny, it would seem we all need to defer to your lifetimes experience because you say so.

Sorry mate, that ain't gonna happen on this subject.

Go ahead and feed soya flour, but you are still WRONG !

Well. now I have fed soya to bees 20 years.
Nothing bad has happened. Should I wait still?

I have believed that fear of soya comes from genemanipulation of soya.