[music]
Hi everyone.
We are going to talk about feeding now.
In this part of the world what we do is feed
our bees in the fall and typically not
again in the spring, so we'll sort of focus
on just fall feeding like that and when we
are feeding in the fall we are trying to get
a large amount of feed in as quickly as possible
so there is a pretty narrow window in the
fall after we've harvested the honey to get
the feed in before the weather gets cold.
We want to feed the bees when all the field bees,
the summer bees are still alive, when there's
a large population of bees that are able to
take that syrup down, ripen it, they invert
the sugar the sucrose into glucose and fructose,
so that takes them a bit of time and energy
and we want to use those summer bees to do that job.
So for right around here we're feeding
in the latter part of September that's an
ideal time, we get the honey off right after
the golden rod flow is finished
and then feed immediately.
We try to feed about four imperial
gallons per colony, so that's quite a large
amount of syrup and that's two to one sugar syrup.
If you are not able to make up two to one
sugar syrup it's not a big deal just make
it up as thick as you can and feed them
proportionally the similar amount.
So we'll talk over the different methods now.
The one method I'll mention is a
frame feeder.
So this feeder replaces a frame
and you put that in place at the outside frame here
you pull that frame out and insert this
feeder there.
Some people put straw or chicken wire in here
to help the bees not drown inside there,
but you can only put about a gallon
in there, so you would need to fill it four
times to get them through the fall.
So that's not my preference.
Works pretty good for spring feeding if you
are wanting to be doing that.
So that's the frame feeder.
Next method we are going to mention
is the pail feeder.
This is a pretty commonly used method.
For that you need an inner cover with a hole in it
and you put that inner cover on
and then you fill up your pail full of sugar syrup,
this is empty right now, but you would turn it over
and it doesn't actually run out,
just a little bit runs out and then it's
it's held in by vacuum pressure, so we turn that
over and you place it over top of that hole.
We just have a little look here, this one
has a screen on it, this is a commercially
made pail feeder, but some people just drill a
bunch of small holes in a lid and that works
pretty well too, so we'll put that over this way
the bees can get up and get at that
and then just to protect that we put an empty
box around it
and then a hive lid goes on top of that.
So now we're done, that feeding is done.
This method works pretty well but it's
rather slow, so it's also not my favourite method.
We'll go on to one more method here before
we talk about my all-time favourite method
which is called barrel feeding.
So the next method we've got here
is a hive top feeder.
This is a wooden box with a slot built into
the middle so the bees can come up through that
into these two tanks here, so we set that
on the hive like so and this will hold four
gallons so it will hold a lot of syrup
and we can fill it up all at once and that's
going to be enough for the bees to winter on.
So we just pour our syrup in
and I like to dribble
just a little bit of syrup down that slot there
just to get them going,
coming up to look for that syrup,
but a lot of bees would drown in there and some
hive top feeders have covers and floats and
so on I prefer to just use straw.
The straw gives them a nice float to climb on
and they can come right up through this slot,
get out onto the straw, get moving around and they'll
take that syrup down in a matter of you know
a week, four or five days a week somewhere
something like that all depending on how warm
the temperatures are, the warmer it is,
the faster they can take it down.
Once they take it down they have to ripen it
as I've mentioned
so warm temperatures help them evaporate that.
If they don't get it evaporated properly it
will ferment in the comb and that causes sickness
of course we would then cover that up
and come back in a week or so
and take that hive top feeder off.
The last method I want to talk about
is barrel feeding and that's what we
actually do here for the most part.
We take a forty-gallon barrel or sorry a forty five
gallon barrel, we fill it with forty gallons
so that leaves a little bit of space at the top,
we put loose straw on the top there and
then we prop the lid up a little bit with a
stick running under the lid, put some bricks
on there so it doesn't blow out the lid doesn't
blow off and that lid keeps the rain from
getting in and causing the honey to ferment,
but the bees will come and find that and sometimes
we need an excluder there or something
to give a bit of scent to it to attract
them to the barrels and very quickly they
find where that is, they come back and they do
round dances tell all the other bees to
get out and get looking and it gets to be
a real frenzy.
They can take that syrup down in three days
so we are feeding a hundred hives
in this location, we'll set up ten barrels,
we put one forty gallon barrel out for every
ten colonies and that's down in three days,
it's amazing how quickly they can move that
syrup and get it into position in their hive.
Some people might think that's maybe not
a good idea it might encourage robbing,
I totally disagree with that
it actually prevents robbing
because the bees get all the food they need
very quickly and they are not interested in
robbing after that, they're not interested
in checking each other out for food or even
it does prevent them from robbing at our
honey house as well, so they are way less of
a nuisance if we get them barrel fed
and they are done.
It's like they just can’t get up one more time to go
to the buffet table, they are done and so
it's a really good method for feeding bees.
So there you go there's a few methods about
feeding bees and you have to choose
what works for you, but all of them will
work fine just play around a little bit and see
what works for you.
Thanks for watching.
So today we are just going to finish up with
overwintering your colonies and how to
prepare them for the winter.
So we've already talked about any sort of
medication and disease control you're going to
have to do in the fall and also feeding your bees.
So we are going to pretend this hive is
a well-fed treated hive ready to go into winter,
we are also going to pretend it's not a
32 degree July day so right now we are talking
late October early November.
So our bees are kind of shut down
for the year, it's getting pretty darn cold
and we are ready to shut her down for the year.
So all our hives are down to just single brood
chambers now or double brood chambers,
just lid, inner cover and again the brood chamber
and the bees, so that's what we've gotten things
down to.
With the first little bit of equipment
we used during the winter is what's called
an entrance reducer or a mouse guard
and that just simply goes in the entrance to exactly
do what it sounds like it should do reduce
the entrance, but it also what it does is protect
the bees from having mice hop in from the
outside and into the colonies, so this will
just slide on in we'll try not to squish any
bees it should just slide right on into the
front of that hive and we really reduce that
entrance down so that the bees can kind of
control the cold air that's kind of coming into
the colony and also especially late fall it's
a good idea to reduce the entrance down
to deal with any sort of robbing, it's a lot easier
for the bees to sort of guard that little bit of
territory than it is that whole width
of that entrance.
So we put in our entrance this reducer that's
our first thing.
If you are using a screen bottom board
there is an opening at the back and when it comes
into winter and the wind in the winter time
the last thing we want is cross ventilation,
so an opening at the back which would be your
regular entrance or sorry the front and then
an opening at the back and that just allows
wind to blow right on through there without
the bees being able to control that.
So with that screen bottom board you are going to
have to plug that up somehow, so this is just a
beveled back block that just fits in that hole.
If you don't have a screen bottom board
you don't have to worry about it, but that
would just simply fit in the hole at the back
and that's pretty easy to do, so just plug that up.
When you are talking about overwintering bees
we talk about them being able to ventilate
and all that sort of stuff it's very one of
the biggest things is you are going to need
is an upper entrance.
So if you are using a wooden inner cover
it should have a little notch on one side
and you are going to want to put that to open.
We don't use that here you've seen in a lot
of the videos we use this little cloth inner cover
so for that we have upper entrances drilled
into all our boxes here, but this time of year it's
very important that we have those upper entrances
first for ventilation during the winter the
bees will ventilate and you know push air
through the colony for whatever purpose they
need, but the second big thing is to get rid
of condensation and humidity sorry get rid
of humidity so it doesn't really condense.
These bees are breathing, a lot of humid air is
coming out and if all that really warm
moist air is really hitting a really cold surface
up top it can condense and start dripping down
on your bees, so anything that we can so the
bees really need an upper entrance in order
to push that out and we are trying to keep
that upper entrance the top part of the hive
as least cold as we can possibly do just to
help avoid with that, those are your two big
ones is air flow and condensation.
So we've got that upper entrance, again we've
got it drilled, but if you have the wooden inner cover
you'd just have that board flipped to open.
The next little bit is some sort of insolation,
so this is some old roofing insolation.
The only sort of insolation you don't really want
to put on your hive is anything that can suck
up moisture.
I know that people seem to think that you want
to draw moisture away from the bees,
but you can just imagine after five,
six months in this colony all that moisture
being whipped up into that insolation wood
shavings or whatever and it can get pretty damp
and soggy and it can kind of get mouldy
and not do the job for the bees.
So you want some sort of insolation that
won't wick moisture and you can put that
right on top of your colony
and again that just keeps that top
from getting too too cold and having that
warm air meet a very cold top.
Then the next thing is your winter wrap.
So there is a variety of different winter wraps,
but typically anything black is pretty darn good.
These are corrugated plastic
and actually what we recommend here.
They are available through the Waterloo County
Bee Keepers' Association and they are just
awesome wraps, they are very cost effective,
very durable, haven't had to throw out one
yet and very easy they just fold on up and
to store them it's very simple.
So we'll put that wrap on, just goes
over the front
and then what we do is just fold up these flaps
on top of that insolation,
put on our lid and now the lid is made
for a standard brood chamber box
and now that we've got this insolation on
it's not going to fit, so what we really
want to do is get that back of the lid on
tight and slide it forward, that way it is on a bit of an
angle sloping back so any sort of
the rain slush snow that is going to be
pelting this lid will just sort of slop off the back
and we won't have to deal with a big pile up of that
sort of stuff at the front of the colony.
So we have that tilted to the
back and the last thing because that lid
isn't on there super tight we just end up putting
a brick on top of our colony and we are
ready for winter.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday.