Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Similarly, the colony must have sufficient pollen reserves - something many hobby
beekeepers ignore or fail to understand. Again, this pollen must be available in or next
to the cluster. Pollen patties (see below) provided near to the cluster four to five weeks
before the availability of natural pollen should stimulate brood rearing. A lack of pollen
will cause the colony to dwindle in late winter and early spring.
Remember also the following:
Bees don't die of cold. They starve.
Bees don't try to heat the hive. They maintain the cluster temperature.
The autumn sugar-syrup feed can be used to administer fumagillin (see Nosema,
Chapter 10) in those countries that permit its use.
Many texts suggest that, around Christmas (or in mid-winter in the Southern
Hemisphere), you should place some sugar candy on the hive's top frames or over the
feed hole if you use an inner cover. If you follow the advice given above, there should be
no need to do this - I don't recommend messing around inside the hives until the spring
unless this is for some experimental purpose, such as to see if the drones are still around
in midwinter or some other such investigation. By all means unblock the entrance if it is
covered with snow and, of course, do something about floods or hives being blown over,
but otherwise leave it all alone - until the spring!
We have discussed how much and when to feed your bees, but how exactly do you
make these feeds? Below are recipes for sugar syrup, invert sugar syrup, queen candy
and pollen substitute. Candy is used for such purposes as blocking a queen-cage exit so
that the bees have to chew it away, thus giving them time to become accustomed to the
queen, and it can also be used as a quick, emergency feed left on top of the bars if no
syrup is available at the time.
