MM,
A month out last year. It was going early April....or was that the year before...
RAB
A month out last year. It was going early April....or was that the year before...
RAB
Spring Preparation for OSR
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Winker
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I have 4 hives this year, in 2 out apairys (2 hives in each) I am going to feed 1 hive in each apairy Nektapoll and see what difrence it makes. I will start feeding at the end of Febuary me thinks
MuswellMetro
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yep ,just looked up our BKA newsletter, sorry got it wrong, that will teach me to check, so lets rephrase that...normally end of april/beginning of may but early or later depending on weather
see, not really interested in it until this year, i will be on the forum in a panic around spring
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Bees want a good carb/protein balance in their income, so if you feed carb ( sugar syrup ) it will encourage them to collect more pollen ( protein ) as well as providing water neede for brood rearing. I've never noticed any benefit from feeding patties in the Spring, but syrup certainly gets them going.
I usually wake them up mid February, but I do shift around brood/foragers and am not that bothered with getting any particular hive going at that time.
Usually, it has been the garden colonies which are easier to monitor, but because J had her 'blue light' sting reaction last June, colonies will not be staying in the garden for much longer. Stores and weather expectations can influence my actions - I don't want to be feeding huge amounts of sugar to all my colonies (to avoid starvation), so I am a little conservative with the numbers of stocks ready for the OSR. 'All your eggs in one basket' problem.
RAB
Usually, it has been the garden colonies which are easier to monitor, but because J had her 'blue light' sting reaction last June, colonies will not be staying in the garden for much longer. Stores and weather expectations can influence my actions - I don't want to be feeding huge amounts of sugar to all my colonies (to avoid starvation), so I am a little conservative with the numbers of stocks ready for the OSR. 'All your eggs in one basket' problem.
RAB
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Yes but that has nothing to do with real knowledge. You have a wrong type patty or you have used it wrong way. How much they consumed your patty when you used it and how much it had protein % ?
Sugar alone does not add brooding. It is sure. It only fills valuable cells and restrict the brood area.
Bees have a strong interest to gather pollen in Spring. You need not "encourage" them. Mostly they tend to gather it too much because it is so much in nature..
.
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I've tried nektapol, feedbee, brewers yeast with sugar, brewers yeast and pollen with sugar and brewers yeast, pollen and soya flour with sugar. Couldnt see that any made a jot of difference compared to neighbouring hives without so I no longer bother with patties at all.
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The Importance of Feeding Protein to Bees
Written by beekeepers
Topics: How to Keep Bees
January 2009
Photo: MinabenVeteran beekeeper Allan Dick, writing in the December issue of the Alberta Beekeepers newsletter, warns that a failure to feed enough protein to bees can cost the lives of colonies.
A year or two back, some very good beekeepers I know and who had fed patties for years quit feeding patties because they figured they had enough — or even too many — bees and did not think they needed to stimulate the colonies. Since they had been feeding patties for years, they had become used to great wintering success and good spring build-up and got to taking that for granted.
HOWEVER, this year, for the first time in a while, they had late winter losses and bad build-up that affected their honey crop very significantly. Sad, but entirely predictable. The patty feeding had given their bees an edge, but the charm wore off after they quit feeding.
Allan Dick says that his beekeeping operation feeds protein patties until mid-June at least, as many as a colony will take. After beginning this regimen, he “immediately noticed that the bees were more robust-looking, BUT the huge bonus was that our wintering loss the following winters stabilized at around 12% – 15%, meaning that 85% of the previous year’s colony count was viable in mid-April” — and this consistently high survival rate kept up over a period of many years, compared to typical losses of up to 40% or “even 50% on occasion. Small, predicable losses were a huge relief after the catastrophic losses we formerly experienced and convinced us that feeding patties was good, cheap insurance.”
Patties are expensive, Dick acknowledges, but so are bees. The cost of losing a single hive, which can be estimated at something around $100 or more, would cover the cost of feeding 4 patties each to more than 20 hives. If feeding protein patties can help colonies to overwinter, helping some to survive the spring dwindling that otherwise wouldn’t make it, and possibly increase the number of hives that could be split — the cost of the patties would be more than repaid by earnings from honey production and pollination, and the reduced work load needed to deal with dead or weak colonies in spring.
A short version of Dick’s article is available on the Global Patties website at http://www.globalpatties.com/pages/articles/cost.htm along with another interesting article on protein feeding from Heather Mattila (PhD Student, Environmental Biology) and Gard Otis — Influence of Protein Surplus and Deficit on Worker Bees and Their Colonies, the results of a honeybee nutrition study in Ontario.
“Colonies that had pollen supplements in early spring produced two to four times more brood than control and pollen restricted colonies, respectively, and only supplemented colonies reared brood in significant amounts before natural pollen foraging began,” Mattila reports. “The earlier and increased rate of rearing also translated into higher honey yields by mid-summer, when pollen-rich colonies produced two times more honey than pollen-stressed colonies.”
The Importance of Feeding Protein to Bees
Written by beekeepers
Topics: How to Keep Bees
January 2009
Photo: MinabenVeteran beekeeper Allan Dick, writing in the December issue of the Alberta Beekeepers newsletter, warns that a failure to feed enough protein to bees can cost the lives of colonies.
A year or two back, some very good beekeepers I know and who had fed patties for years quit feeding patties because they figured they had enough — or even too many — bees and did not think they needed to stimulate the colonies. Since they had been feeding patties for years, they had become used to great wintering success and good spring build-up and got to taking that for granted.
HOWEVER, this year, for the first time in a while, they had late winter losses and bad build-up that affected their honey crop very significantly. Sad, but entirely predictable. The patty feeding had given their bees an edge, but the charm wore off after they quit feeding.
Allan Dick says that his beekeeping operation feeds protein patties until mid-June at least, as many as a colony will take. After beginning this regimen, he “immediately noticed that the bees were more robust-looking, BUT the huge bonus was that our wintering loss the following winters stabilized at around 12% – 15%, meaning that 85% of the previous year’s colony count was viable in mid-April” — and this consistently high survival rate kept up over a period of many years, compared to typical losses of up to 40% or “even 50% on occasion. Small, predicable losses were a huge relief after the catastrophic losses we formerly experienced and convinced us that feeding patties was good, cheap insurance.”
Patties are expensive, Dick acknowledges, but so are bees. The cost of losing a single hive, which can be estimated at something around $100 or more, would cover the cost of feeding 4 patties each to more than 20 hives. If feeding protein patties can help colonies to overwinter, helping some to survive the spring dwindling that otherwise wouldn’t make it, and possibly increase the number of hives that could be split — the cost of the patties would be more than repaid by earnings from honey production and pollination, and the reduced work load needed to deal with dead or weak colonies in spring.
A short version of Dick’s article is available on the Global Patties website at http://www.globalpatties.com/pages/articles/cost.htm along with another interesting article on protein feeding from Heather Mattila (PhD Student, Environmental Biology) and Gard Otis — Influence of Protein Surplus and Deficit on Worker Bees and Their Colonies, the results of a honeybee nutrition study in Ontario.
“Colonies that had pollen supplements in early spring produced two to four times more brood than control and pollen restricted colonies, respectively, and only supplemented colonies reared brood in significant amounts before natural pollen foraging began,” Mattila reports. “The earlier and increased rate of rearing also translated into higher honey yields by mid-summer, when pollen-rich colonies produced two times more honey than pollen-stressed colonies.”
Finman
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(WHO IS WHO 25 Jan 2010 – Heather Mattila, assistant professor of biological sciences at Wellesley College) MORE
http://www.google.com/search?source...archBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&rlz=1I7ADFA_fiFI449
Influence of Protein Surplus and Deficit
on Worker Bees and Their Colonies
Heather Mattila (PhD Student, Environmental Biology) and Gard Otis
My first two years of graduate work have concentrated on the influence of protein availability on the ability of honey bees to overwinter.
Brood rearing ceases in colonies in late fall and the workers produced at this time are long-lived "winter" bees that cluster within the colony from late fall to spring. Winter bees are characterised by hypertrophied fat bodies and hypopharyngeal glands, which are two major locations of internal protein storage.
Aside from internal worker reserves, protein is also stored externally as pollen in the honey comb. Over the winter, bees utilise these resources to provide protein for the nutrition of developing larvae.
A colony must begin rearing young replacement bees in late winter in order to build colony strength for the spring, long before adequate pollen foraging conditions exist. When fall or spring pollen supply is limited, protein-starved colonies will have to compromise the quality and/or quantity of the workers that are produced for and by the overwintering population. Previous studies have demonstrated that protein status plays an important role in the ability of colonies to overwinter, but the influence of protein availability on the development of the overwintering population and the spring population that it produces remains poorly understood.
In my first field season, I examined the trade-offs made in the production of spring workers by overwintered colonies that were pollen-stressed (low pollen) or pollen-rich (high pollen) prior to spring foraging. I estimated both the quantity (area of sealed brood) and the quality (weight, size, asymmetry, total protein content, longevity and nursing behaviour) of workers reared by these colonies in the spring, as well as honey production in the following summer.
Colonies that had pollen supplements in early spring produced two to four times more brood than control and pollen restricted colonies, respectively, and only supplemented colonies reared brood in significant amounts before natural pollen foraging began.
Although treatment did not affect weight, size or asymmetry of workers, worker longevity was significantly affected: workers reared in pollen-rich colonies lived an average of 15 days longer than workers reared in pollen-stressed colonies.
The survival curves (Figure 2) show that, in general, a greater proportion of bees reared under high pollen conditions were present in the observation hive than bees from control or low pollen colonies.
Longevity increased even when workers experienced a common environment as an adult, which means that differences were due to rearing conditions alone.
Colonies were unable to maintain worker quality at the expense of quantity, or vice versa, but instead experienced a reduction in both.
The earlier and increased rate of rearing also translated into higher honey yields by mid-summer, when pollen-rich colonies produced two times more honey than pollen-stressed colonies.
There was no difference in the early behaviour of the bees, but the data suggest that workers from pollen-rich colonies spend more time performing in-hive duties before moving to outside tasks such as foraging. I am currently exploring these possible differences in age-related behaviour.
The research that I am presently conducting is focused on establishing a comprehensive understanding of the effect of pollen availability on the size and timing of development of winter and spring populations by following worker survivorship in pollen-manipulated colonies. This study also includes quality and quantity comparisons for the fall-produced winter population. I am conducting a complementary fall study with marked workers in observation hives to determine the effects of fall pollen availability on nursing and foraging, two critical tasks that workers perform.
http://www.google.com/search?source...archBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&rlz=1I7ADFA_fiFI449
Influence of Protein Surplus and Deficit
on Worker Bees and Their Colonies
Heather Mattila (PhD Student, Environmental Biology) and Gard Otis
My first two years of graduate work have concentrated on the influence of protein availability on the ability of honey bees to overwinter.
Brood rearing ceases in colonies in late fall and the workers produced at this time are long-lived "winter" bees that cluster within the colony from late fall to spring. Winter bees are characterised by hypertrophied fat bodies and hypopharyngeal glands, which are two major locations of internal protein storage.
Aside from internal worker reserves, protein is also stored externally as pollen in the honey comb. Over the winter, bees utilise these resources to provide protein for the nutrition of developing larvae.
A colony must begin rearing young replacement bees in late winter in order to build colony strength for the spring, long before adequate pollen foraging conditions exist. When fall or spring pollen supply is limited, protein-starved colonies will have to compromise the quality and/or quantity of the workers that are produced for and by the overwintering population. Previous studies have demonstrated that protein status plays an important role in the ability of colonies to overwinter, but the influence of protein availability on the development of the overwintering population and the spring population that it produces remains poorly understood.
In my first field season, I examined the trade-offs made in the production of spring workers by overwintered colonies that were pollen-stressed (low pollen) or pollen-rich (high pollen) prior to spring foraging. I estimated both the quantity (area of sealed brood) and the quality (weight, size, asymmetry, total protein content, longevity and nursing behaviour) of workers reared by these colonies in the spring, as well as honey production in the following summer.
Colonies that had pollen supplements in early spring produced two to four times more brood than control and pollen restricted colonies, respectively, and only supplemented colonies reared brood in significant amounts before natural pollen foraging began.
Although treatment did not affect weight, size or asymmetry of workers, worker longevity was significantly affected: workers reared in pollen-rich colonies lived an average of 15 days longer than workers reared in pollen-stressed colonies.
The survival curves (Figure 2) show that, in general, a greater proportion of bees reared under high pollen conditions were present in the observation hive than bees from control or low pollen colonies.
Longevity increased even when workers experienced a common environment as an adult, which means that differences were due to rearing conditions alone.
Colonies were unable to maintain worker quality at the expense of quantity, or vice versa, but instead experienced a reduction in both.
The earlier and increased rate of rearing also translated into higher honey yields by mid-summer, when pollen-rich colonies produced two times more honey than pollen-stressed colonies.
There was no difference in the early behaviour of the bees, but the data suggest that workers from pollen-rich colonies spend more time performing in-hive duties before moving to outside tasks such as foraging. I am currently exploring these possible differences in age-related behaviour.
The research that I am presently conducting is focused on establishing a comprehensive understanding of the effect of pollen availability on the size and timing of development of winter and spring populations by following worker survivorship in pollen-manipulated colonies. This study also includes quality and quantity comparisons for the fall-produced winter population. I am conducting a complementary fall study with marked workers in observation hives to determine the effects of fall pollen availability on nursing and foraging, two critical tasks that workers perform.
mbc,
so I no longer bother with patties at all.
Probably spot on for most UK spring expansion. I look in my colonies and find they have stored lots of pollen the pevious autumn (such as ivy) and are bringing back plenty more when flying (certainly not a lot of nectar about early in the spring!).
If the weather were to turn nasty, for the bees, I am geared up to provide some extra protein should it be required. Hasn't been necessary for the last few seasons, that is for sure. Just goes to show how different UK beekeeping is to the different conditions in Finland. Must be like comparing chalk and cheese! Different country, different climate, different beekeeping methods.
Regards, RAB
so I no longer bother with patties at all.
Probably spot on for most UK spring expansion. I look in my colonies and find they have stored lots of pollen the pevious autumn (such as ivy) and are bringing back plenty more when flying (certainly not a lot of nectar about early in the spring!).
If the weather were to turn nasty, for the bees, I am geared up to provide some extra protein should it be required. Hasn't been necessary for the last few seasons, that is for sure. Just goes to show how different UK beekeeping is to the different conditions in Finland. Must be like comparing chalk and cheese! Different country, different climate, different beekeeping methods.
Regards, RAB
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If your hives has enough pollen you should tell it to other beeks.
Why you then bye all kind of patties.
This patty feeding is not my invention, you know.
If your hives has enough pollen you should tell it to other beeks.
Why you then bye all kind of patties.
This patty feeding is not my invention, you know.
bobandbec
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Pollen sub on hives second or third week in February to try to get them ready for middle of April around here when the OSR arrives. Unite if necessary.
Managed an average of 80lbs OSR honey per colony in both of the last two years.
Get big colonies ready for flowering. 10 big is better than 20 small.
Peter
Managed an average of 80lbs OSR honey per colony in both of the last two years.
Get big colonies ready for flowering. 10 big is better than 20 small.
Peter
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Interestingly Finman, although the article you linked to is mainly about protein, its opening sentences would seem to support the use of syrup-
In a supplementary feeding program, sugar is a most effective bee feed, because it stimulates the bees into breeding, foraging for pollen, and metabolising stored honey and protein. Sugar feeding can kick start bees into action. It can be used to capitalise on out-of-season honey flows, to prepare bees for pollination, start bees breeding earlier in the spring and to prepare hives for queen breeding. However, feeding sugar only is a stimulus to the bees and not a balanced diet.
Stored honey is a very good energy source, but bees are reluctant to use it unless they really need it. They use it only when there is no fresh nectar available, such as during a drought or in winter. It does not stimulate bees to breed, except in the spring when natural brood expansion occurs.
Therefore if you wish to stimulate brood expansion before it naturally occurs, syrup can have a role.
I don't think anyone would downplay the role of protein, but both Rab and I were referring to a situation where they have large stores of pollen.
.PS just refreshed and got posts 14-33, to put this in context.
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OP
UEAHoneyBeeMan
New Bee
WOW!
That's a thorough response to my seemingly innocuous question! Thank you everyone for your input and advice.
As with most things there seems to be several methods that work for different beekeepers depending on the location and type of bees you have.
Oh, Hello Tony, thanks for saying Hi.
I think I shall try a variety of methods and see which works out the best for the bees. I'm not a commercial beekeeper so it's more a project to see if helping them build early results in a bigger honey crop.
Stewart
That's a thorough response to my seemingly innocuous question! Thank you everyone for your input and advice.
As with most things there seems to be several methods that work for different beekeepers depending on the location and type of bees you have.
Oh, Hello Tony, thanks for saying Hi.
I think I shall try a variety of methods and see which works out the best for the bees. I'm not a commercial beekeeper so it's more a project to see if helping them build early results in a bigger honey crop.
Stewart
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Just be aware that building them up early often can result in earlier issues too.
Swarming for one, so you need to have a think about your plan for that issue.
In a good Spring there is probably no need to feed pollen, but........as I have posted often enough and with a much harsher climate in my experience, it can pay off very well indeed.
Think maritime climate north of Moscow. No not Finland, Aberdeenshire. LOL
PH
Swarming for one, so you need to have a think about your plan for that issue.
In a good Spring there is probably no need to feed pollen, but........as I have posted often enough and with a much harsher climate in my experience, it can pay off very well indeed.
Think maritime climate north of Moscow. No not Finland, Aberdeenshire. LOL
PH
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oh boy. Is it so difficult to use brains. Patty is needed if bees does not get pollen from nature.
australians have plants which does not give such pollen which keep brood alive. Alfa alfa is one and another is kiwi.
What is so difficult: if bees get pollen from nature, they do not need feeding.
If bees do not get pollen from nature and pollen store is finnish in the hive, they stop brooding.
Very few feed hives with protein. They stay however very well alive. No need to repeat it.
It is not necessary to clear out to me either, what bees need. If I have not learned it in 50 years, it remains secret to me.
I am really tired to explain same things every week. Really stupid depate. And Rab is able to stir what ever issue with his own ideas. It is pity that hand is quicker than brains.
You may understand what ever report how you like. It helps nothing.
.
.
MuswellMetro
Queen Bee
As i have said before, first time for me on OSR but due to the fact that some appear to have have had brood most of this mild winter (wax mirror flakes on varroa board uncapping pattern and especially as some are KBS NZ Italian Queens) then I think mine are going to be low on Protein by 1st March
So i am adding 500g of pollen/fondant and a close water source but not on my Buckfast F1/F2 and Hertfordshire mongrels that are also going to OSR as they have less breeding activity (they unlike the italains are not collecting pollen at every mild day)
Ok i may have it wrong but i try to read my bees, as they don't my read books, however some days their books appear to be in Finnish not English
So i am adding 500g of pollen/fondant and a close water source but not on my Buckfast F1/F2 and Hertfordshire mongrels that are also going to OSR as they have less breeding activity (they unlike the italains are not collecting pollen at every mild day)
Ok i may have it wrong but i try to read my bees, as they don't my read books, however some days their books appear to be in Finnish not English
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Finman
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very interesting to those who have nursed bees more than one year.
All know that sugar feeding inspire pollen foraging. But when bees cannot go out for weather or for lack of flowers, it helps nothing.
Just now in California there are tens of thousands of hives, and no flowers. Now they seek a key to CCD from good protein feeding. Almond start blooming soon.
It is fine that bees in Britain can forage in rain and wind. I wonder too that you feed sugar to your hives all the time. They have not time to forage honey. i get here 100 kg honey from hives on average even if I do not understand nothing about beekeeping.
.it is really a bad day. I regret that I woke up.
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Finman
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reading bees is so simple. When you open the hive you see
- how much cluster occupyes frames
- how many brood frames
- amount of capped food
- amount of pollen
- how even is brood capping or has some one shooted it with shotgun.
- experience that you know what shall happen
Really difficult. You need not language in that.
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