talking about feeding sugar syrup to bees, so sugar syrup is the ideal
replacement for nectar and honey when colonies run short of nectar or honey or
need to be stimulated it's also important that bees get protein in the
form of pollen so feeding sugar alone is not necessarily the answer particularly
in the spring and summer when bees are breeding we use three different mixes of
sugar syrup depending on the time of the year and the need so the first one is to
stimulate colonies in the spring where we use 50% sugar and 50% water and make
it into a sugar syrup heating the water up to melt the sugar and then feeding it
in various feeders as we'll see later on if we want to put stores on the colony we
don't want them to do a lot of work to reduce the sugar moisture
content whereas we do in the spring to generate heat to make the bees breed
so in the autumn time we feed 2/3 sugar and 1/3 water by volume the other option
is to feed white sugar under a lid on a mat and we just moisten the white sugar
which makes it more attractive to bees and they don't waste as much but
you don't need much moisture in it that means the bees have got a lot less
work to do to make it into honey for stores nectar is 70% moisture the bees
gotta reduce it down to below 21% to make it into honey and the same with
sugar syrup they need to get the moisture out of it so it won't ferment so
there are three mixes in spring and summer to stimulate the bees 50 percent
by volume with sugar and water stores in the autumn two-thirds sugar one-third
water or ordinary white sugar moistened so to feed bees in winter you're
gonna need probably a full box of honey if you live on the tablelands
because bees will consume more honey in the winter on the tablelands even
though they're hibernating they don't get anything on the coast you probably
need four or five frames of honey in the super because they've got to fly and get
some food during the winter months when your feed bees you need to feed them
small quantities fairly regular if you want to stimulate them so one or two
liters every second day if you want to put stores on them in winter you need to
give them probably five or six liters in one hit so that they'll store it and
that will be much thicker syrup 2/3 sugar 1/3 water simulating
50/50 by volume in this hive I just want to demonstrate where bees put sugar
syrup so this type of feeder is called a bottle feeder and it fits in the
entrance and I've put some dye in that some food dye in that just to see where
beess put sugar syrup in a colony just to give you an idea as to where it goes
I'll now open the hive up and we'll have a look and see where the syrup is gone
I put some white combs in so what combs will show where the syrup goes
where as combs that have had brood in before are darker and you won't be able to
see so pull this frame out in the super and you'll notice the blue cells where
the syrup has been spread to the edge and along the bottom there above that
is nectar that they've collected in the last week or so and they haven't mixed
the colored syrup with the nectar that they've collected on that frame now look
at another frame that I put in which was white frame and if we look at this frame
we'll see that they've put syrup all through their round there the capped
honey's been there before that was older honey so they've spread that the
syrup in different parts of the hive just like that
well now look in the brood box to see where they put it
in the brood box if they put any in the brood box or did they put all the syrup
in the super which is the top box now take this off put it to one side and
I put one more came in here in the brood box so that we can see where the
syrup went to I'll pull that frame out and we'll see you know what's happened
with it and we notice probably more in the brood box the brood areas around
there with his eggs and an odd sealed cell but they put a massive amount above the
brood that they've currently got in the colony and the same on the other side
they put the syrup spread around above the brood nest I'll now put that back
together again and we'll talk about how to feed the colony using different
methods you feed the colony in the super when it's light of honey so this hive
needed to be fed and I can feel the weight to tell it it needs to be fed
before I open it up and we'll go through some different methods so one method is
to use a frame feeder like this you buy those from beekeeping supply places you
pour sugar syrup in there for stores 2/3 sugar 1/3 water and
you need floats of some sort polystyrene or something like that so the bees don't
drown you fill that up and every second or third day you can fill it up because
you want to put stores in if you want to stimulate the colony it's a thinner
syrup and every second or third day just one or two liters the important thing is
don't allow syrup to stay in the container for any length of time
this will ferment and yeast will get in there so if you look after two days if it
hasn't all been consumed by the colony you need to wash it and clean it to get
rid of any yeast but you certainly need polystyrene you know floats or some
other type of float that's called a frame
feeder the other type you can do that I'll talk about is to fill frames up
with sugar syrup so this is an empty frame here
there's no nectar in it to save buying any feeders I can fill this up with
sugar syrup so I make up my sugar syrup 2/3 sugar 1/3 water if it's this
time if it's autumn time 50/50 if it's spring time and I just rain that into
the cells like so you need to spray it in like that so the air is expelled out
of the cells and the cells will become full of sugar syrup you can turn it
around and that syrup won't fall out I'll do that just demonstrate so
completely turned around it's not falling out I can do the other side
the same like so until all the cells are full like that so this saves you buying
feeders or anything and that can hold two liters of sugar syrup to prove it's
full I can shake it and shake the syrup out on the ground and you can see it's
raining out on the ground so you've got to shake it out to get it out it just
doesn't fall out the cells are sloped backwards and that's
proof that the syrup is in that frame like that just put them in there do a
couple on the spring and in the autumn until they cap the syrup over and then it
becomes honey and that gives them stores the other type of feeder that's popular
you know with some commercial beekeepers is this type of feeder it fits in when
you take the frames out of a super you pour sugar syrup in that you got
polystyrene floats inside the bees don't drown the bees come up and get the
syrup so commercial beekeepers extracted honey there's no honey flow could after
that or fill this up to give their bees stores for winter and keep their bees alive
the other method that's used is you know with an ordinary mat above a lid that's
got a gap above it you put that there your moisten sugar just white sugar and
the booze will come up and take that in the autumn we want them to do the
minimum amount of work to get the maximum amount of honey that they ripened
the sugar from and in the spring you know we stimulate them so therefore it's
thinner the key thing is if there's no pollen coming in prticurly in spring and
summer putting sugar syrup won't keep bees alive in drought sugar syrup won't
keep bees alive unless there's pollen so you need to feed pollen as well to the
colony in the form of paddies or pure pollen inside the colony some
beekeepers put sugar syrup feeders out in the open and the bees fly to the sugar
syrup feeders and collected the syrup that way but by doing that you've got
problems with feeding other people's bees when you feed sugar syrup you got
to be aware that ants are a problem so you may need to take some corrective action
to prevent ants attacking your hive because sugar syrup is attracting ants
don't spill any don't allow bees to rob because they'll rob when you're feeding
sugar syrup particularly in the autumn another type of feeder is this type of
feeder which is similar to the bottle feeder and that just slides in the
entrance of the colony and the syrup goes down there doesn't run out a bit
like a chicken bowater feeder and the bees suck up the sugar syrup the
advantage of these types of feeders is that you can see how much is consumed
and you can replenish it when the bees have taken all they need whereas
internal feeders you can't see that another way you can do it if you don't
want to buy special food is is to get a ziplock bag plastic bag partly fill it
with sugar syrup put a couple of pin holes in it and put it on
a mat or on the top bars of the frames under a lid and the bees will suck the
sugar syrup out of plastic bags this is the first set of a number of videos that
members of the illawarra beekeepers Association are doing so that members can see first hand
how different beekeepers carry out different operations for the management of their
colonies over a 12 month period