When do i feed my bees in the spring

Extra honey frames from super strong colonies. Stealing from the rich, feeding to the poor…. Crystallized or moldy honeycomb.

Sugar syrup. This should be cane or beet sugar, and never raw the solids will make them sick. Organic sugar is costly but will limit pesticide introduction. In the spring, feed a sugar to water syrup. This will encourage them to eat it directly rather than store it, which is what we want!

Do some research on different feeding styles - there are so many different ways to do it, and they each have their pros and cons. April 04, Tweet Share Pin It Email. Also in Education. In our experience over the past two years, the most reliable source for receiving live bees in the spring has been to order package bees.

If you are a new beekeeper, we would usually recommend starting with a nuc, but because they have become much harder to secure, you may want to try things a different way this year. You can move a hive in one day if it's over 1 mile away. The bees will be fine and reorient themselves. If you are doing a smaller move, less than 1 mile, you will need to take some extra steps to move your hive successfully.

In a two box, langstroth hive, your queen should be in the bottom box laying, and the top box should be full of the honey the bees need for winter stores. This is called "setting the brood nest" for the fall. Sign up for our Newsletter.

Those February or March thaws allow us to get outside, clean up the yard from the fallen branches that have collected during the Winter, perhaps start poking around in the garden, or simply go for a walk and enjoy the balmy weather. If we were on the ball and did everything we were supposed to in Autumn, we have been able to ignore the bees for the last several months and it is easy to continue to forget them now, just when they may be needing us the most.

Hives that are treated this way tend to be much stronger in Spring than hives that need to be fed during the Winter or early Spring. If the capped frames of honey left in the hive are located on the side of the hive opposite the clustering bees, then the frames of honey should be moved so that they are adjacent to the bees, sandwiching the cluster.

If there is little, or no capped honey left in the hive, then the beekeeper misjudged feeding requirements in the Fall and the colony now requires feeding as soon as possible. From my perspective, the best way to feed a colony in need is to slap a full shallow or medium super of capped honey on top of the hive.

Unfortunately, full supers are likely to be in short supply at this time of year, unless you have colonies that died over the Winter and have not had their honey robbed out yet.

Sometimes, full frames of capped honey can be taken from several dead colonies in order to fill a super that can be used for feeding a colony in need. The biggest danger in this approach however is that diseases can be spread between colonies this way, so it is extremely important that the dead colonies that are providing the frames of honey for feeding are thoroughly inspected to be sure they did not die from something that may be contagious, such as American foulbrood or nosema.

If there is any question as to the reason the hives died, then feeding syrup instead of honey is a safer approach. This is why entrance feeders sometimes also called Boardman entrance feeders , that position the syrup on the bottom board by the hive entrance are fairly worthless at this time of year.

A cluster of bees located up against the inner cover will not break the cluster in order to reach the feeder by the bottom board except on those relatively rare warm days. It is a gamble to feed bees this way with the hope that the colony will process enough of the syrup during warm weather to be able to survive the cold snaps that are still sure to come. A more reliable approach is to use a feeding method that positions the syrup close, if not adjacent to, the cluster.

Hive top feeders that resemble supers in size and shape and are placed under the inner cover on top of the hive, are a bit better than entrance feeders. They will position the syrup closer to the cluster, however the bees will still need to travel a significant distance from the cluster, up the side of the top feeder, over the top of the feeder and down to the syrup reservoir.

This also does not work very well in cold weather, though the temperature range at which the bees will be able to reach the top feeder will likely be a few degrees lower than with the entrance feeder, since some heat rising from the cluster may help to warm the space above. Another drawback to the top hive feeder is that many designs on the market seem to result in at least some bees drowning in the sugar syrup.

The division board feeder takes the place of a frame within the hive body, and is a much better option since it can be positioned adjacent to the cluster making it easier for the bees to gain access to the feed despite the persisting cold temperatures. Small pieces of wood are often placed in the feeder to float in the syrup and provide the bees with a life raft should they fall in. Despite this precaution, inevitably some bees are likely to drown in the syrup anyway. This may require you to sacrifice additional time on those rare warm days in order to care for your bees.