Is it too early to feed pollen substitute ?

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I think the OP needs to think this through far more carefully.

Think time scale; think number of bees; think nurse bees, think lay-rate; think brood cycle. That is apart from thinking of the nutrients (all, including water) needed for brooding.

I'm afraid the thinking so far does not appear to been joined up too well. A sheet of paper, and map out the time line, etc would be a good exercise, I think.

Oliver, I'm a new beek and this is my first ever winter/spring. I must admit I'm still not totally up on all the timings of things like this, hence the reason that I am asking for advice from more experienced beeks on here.

I'm obviously being a bit thick so instead of being a condescending tit, why dont you explain it in a way that us thicko noobs might understand and learn from.

Obviously, please try to avoid using words of more than two syllables please.....
 
Sir Quej
You are not alone, all the older than two years beekeeping books to my mind are already out of date. Times are changing fast, last year was a disaster for breeding, for pollination and for the human race. This year may be better But then it may be worse. The Jetstream is still in turmoil. Nothing can be taken for granted anymore. Your learning curve this year will be the same as any other "old time" beekeeper and he will not know all the answers either.
My motto, watch the bees and try and read what they are doing.
Bob.
 
Sir Quej
You are not alone, all the older than two years beekeeping books to my mind are already out of date. Times are changing fast, last year was a disaster for breeding, for pollination and for the human race. This year may be better But then it may be worse. The Jetstream is still in turmoil. Nothing can be taken for granted anymore. Your learning curve this year will be the same as any other "old time" beekeeper and he will not know all the answers either.
My motto, watch the bees and try and read what they are doing.
Bob.

Thanks Bob. There really is a lot to learn and I love to learn by actually doing. The problem is that any potential mistakes/mis judgements can literally cost thousands of lives....lol. No pressure then.:sos:

I would hate to think that I had wiped out a whole colony through lack of knowledge or inexperience. I would be gutted.

I have read quite a few books and have been on the basic bee keeping course, but there is nothing better than experience, which is why I find this forum so valuable.

Obviously everyones experience is different but I tend to go on the basis that if I get three different peices of advice, the happy medium should be a safe bet. Most on here are very helpful (this includes Oliver most of the time).

Thansk for your advice.
 
My advice to you, as a first year beek, is to learn to walk before you try running.

I used to feed early to get them going (1:1 syrup). I don't do that any more. I do it different. I'm not an high output beek and, as I have posted more than a couple of times, I have missed the boat on more than one OSR crop.

A lot of beeks will say there was no nectar, so they didn't harvest a lot of OSR honey. Most years (but not last year, for sure) they were likely late building up and were still brooding the forage bees when the flow was at its height.

It is a lotto when the crop gets into full flow and that is the biggest puzzle to sort in advance.

Queens are laying at a low rate with a cluster of perhaps 10k worker bees - and they will all be dead by the time the OSR is ready. You need getting on for 50k bees. If the queen lays at 2000 a day that is 25 days and she does not go from very few per day to that number all at once. There would not be enough nurse bees to keep the brood warm. That means she will get faster after the first brood cycle. You then need 6 weeks more to get your approx. 17k bees to the forage part of their life. Neither the end of the month, or even half way through, will achieve your ideal goal if the OSR blooms the first week in April. But it will likely be better than waiting for them to wake up on their own. OSR is not a nature type crop, is it?

But you are further north than me and the OSR will be later in your area than mine.

So, what do I do? I do supply a small feed then mostly water for the bees. I do select the bees I am going to take to the OSR. I do transfer brood, about to emerge, to the 'OSR hives'. That means some hives are kept as 'no honey' hives for the first flow. They catch up later.

Mostly they do not need pollen patties as I am not overly worried about how many hives I get ready for the OSR. I go with the flow, you might say. Most years they collect pollen without any trouble and have good pollen stores from the last autumn. Hence my comment about the actual need for patties.

There are a lot of 'ifs and buts' and no one season is the same as the others. I change my plan if it needs to be changed, spring unites are all part of the plan as well.

As I said early on in this post, learn to walk first, and for sure if you don't savvy the way bees build up in a normal fashion, let alone speeding them up to be ready for the OSR, learn a bit more before you try to run or you will trip up.

Right, tried to avoid three part words all the way through the post and you still will not manage it in your first year with a couple hives. Too early and you will have to feed them in a very careful way. Most likely they will be too late for the best crop. But any help they get will improve the chance of a good crop. You will get the idea when you have a bit more detail to work with; it is all very basic stuff really and can be got from any good bee book.
 
Thanks Oliver. That post made v.good reading and was very informative. Apologies for the "condescending tit" remark (**** day at work, and a bit grumpy).
 
My advice to you, as a first year beek, is to learn to walk before you try running.

I used to feed early to get them going (1:1 syrup). I don't do that any more. I do it different. I'm not an high output beek and, as I have posted more than a couple of times, I have missed the boat on more than one OSR crop.

A lot of beeks will say there was no nectar, so they didn't harvest a lot of OSR honey. Most years (but not last year, for sure) they were likely late building up and were still brooding the forage bees when the flow was at its height.

It is a lotto when the crop gets into full flow and that is the biggest puzzle to sort in advance.

Queens are laying at a low rate with a cluster of perhaps 10k worker bees - and they will all be dead by the time the OSR is ready. You need getting on for 50k bees. If the queen lays at 2000 a day that is 25 days and she does not go from very few per day to that number all at once. There would not be enough nurse bees to keep the brood warm. That means she will get faster after the first brood cycle. You then need 6 weeks more to get your approx. 17k bees to the forage part of their life. Neither the end of the month, or even half way through, will achieve your ideal goal if the OSR blooms the first week in April. But it will likely be better than waiting for them to wake up on their own. OSR is not a nature type crop, is it?

But you are further north than me and the OSR will be later in your area than mine.

So, what do I do? I do supply a small feed then mostly water for the bees. I do select the bees I am going to take to the OSR. I do transfer brood, about to emerge, to the 'OSR hives'. That means some hives are kept as 'no honey' hives for the first flow. They catch up later.

Mostly they do not need pollen patties as I am not overly worried about how many hives I get ready for the OSR. I go with the flow, you might say. Most years they collect pollen without any trouble and have good pollen stores from the last autumn. Hence my comment about the actual need for patties.

There are a lot of 'ifs and buts' and no one season is the same as the others. I change my plan if it needs to be changed, spring unites are all part of the plan as well.

As I said early on in this post, learn to walk first, and for sure if you don't savvy the way bees build up in a normal fashion, let alone speeding them up to be ready for the OSR, learn a bit more before you try to run or you will trip up.

Right, tried to avoid three part words all the way through the post and you still will not manage it in your first year with a couple hives. Too early and you will have to feed them in a very careful way. Most likely they will be too late for the best crop. But any help they get will improve the chance of a good crop. You will get the idea when you have a bit more detail to work with; it is all very basic stuff really and can be got from any good bee book.

Good post and explains a lot of what you need to take into account.

I have a relatively small number of hives (20-30) and they need to return sufficient income for me to be able to keep them and expand numbers if at all possible.
My long term aim is to gain the skills from this slow increase and knowledge gained that eventually I can, when I retire from my day job have an extra income from something I enjoy.
As a result I only keep bees that are predominently productive and easy to keep, I care little if they are black, yellow, have a funny wing pattern or bright green stripes.
In my opinion there has over recent years been more chance of an good early crop than a late one in my area i.e. before the June gap. In order to take advantage of this early but short term abundance I need to maximise the number of bees available and hence feed. It worked last year with the hives returning a really good crop from what was for most a disastrous year
Not everyone's way of keeping bees I know but as they say horses for courses.
S
 
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Good post and explains a lot of what you need to take into account.

I have a relatively small number of hives (20-30) and they need to return sufficient income for me to be able to keep them and expand numbers if at all possible.
My long term aim is to gain the skills from this slow increase and knowledge gained that eventually I can, when I retire from my day job have an extra income from something I enjoy.
As a result I only keep bees that are predominently productive and easy to keep, I care little if they are black, yellow, have a funny wing pattern or bright green stripes.
In my opinion there has over recent years been more chance of an good early crop than a late one in my area i.e. before the June gap. In order to take advantage of this early but short term abundance I need to maximise the number of bees available and hence feed. It worked last year with the hives returning a really good crop from what was for most a disastrous year
Not everyone's way of keeping bees I know but as they say horses for courses.
S

Hi Stiffy

To be honest, I'm not bothered about honey returns in the slightest at the moment. It's my first year and it's still purely a hobby for me at the moment. This is why if I have to feed, I'll feed. the cost of said feeding is irrelevant and I'm not bothered about netting it off against honey profits or anything like that. I guess you could say that the bees are just a training tool for me at the moment and if I get some honey, then this is a bonus.

This doesnt mean that I dont want to take advantage of any crops that I can. It just means that the crop timing isnt the leading factor in any decisions I will make.

the reason for my original post was because I was worried about the decline in numbers in two of my hives and wanted to find out about whether or not feeding them pollen subs was a viable option to start them building up.

It might just be a case of a noob getting panicky two quickly (and I hope it is).
 

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