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  • Winter feeding - slow progress for one hive

  • General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #712  by Newbee
 20 Sep 2018, 17:37
I started feeding two hives with thick sugar syrup using identical Ashforth feeders last Sunday. The hives are next to each other and the queens are sisters. The first hive was from a nuc and the second, which I got several weeks after the first, was a full colony. Having filled both feeders at the same time with 5 litres of syrup, I checked on them a few days later and found that the first hive had completely emptied the feeder, but the second had hardly touched it. Of the two hives, even before we fed them, the first hive already had more stores than the second. The second hive had a few drowned bees in the space where the bees take up the syrup, but otherwise there are no obvious differences between the two. Can anyone offer any advice on whether this is normal, and nothing to worry about, or if the second hive needs something else to encourage it to take the syrup?
 #713  by Nigel Pringle
 20 Sep 2018, 18:13
You sometimes need to spill some syrup down the insides of the feeders to encourage the bees to follow the syrup trail upwards to "discover" the free feed.
Occasionally, no matter what you do, they aren't interested. I've no idea why.
It's a good idea to have some idea of store levels. If your 2nd hive is low and won't take syrup you can always remove stores from your other hive and replace frames. as required.
You can continue feeding through October/Nov, so no real rush.
 #716  by Patrick
 20 Sep 2018, 20:54
Hi Newbee and welcome to the Forum

Frustrating. I have had the same issue now and again. Do you still have any varroa treatment such as Apiguard still on? I have had some bees point blank refuse to take down syrup with it on and very tardily after it was removed leaving them short for winter. I would certainly trickle some syrup down the edge as Nigel suggests onto the top of the brood frames to encourage them up.

Are you sure the second hive is queenright? If there is a queen issue it can sometimes demoralise them (oops getting a bit anthropomorphic) and they can switch off a bit.
 #718  by AdamD
 21 Sep 2018, 09:17
Sometimes colonies don't seem to take down feed - I think nosema has been suggested as a possible reason in the past; however you mention that out of the two colonies, it's the nuc is not taking the feed - how recently has it been made up? Is it small in numbers so that there are not many bees to take the syrup down?

I cannot recall any mention of it anywhere but I assume that it is mainly the foragers that will take syrup down for a colony and a fairly new nuc will not necessarily have many and will potentially be 'unbalanced' with the colony putting in extra effort to rear brood to increase it's size - even in September. A mature colony at this time of year will be shrinking in numbers and have plenty of older bees which eagerly take syrup down.
 #719  by Newbee
 21 Sep 2018, 13:24
AdamD wrote:Sometimes colonies don't seem to take down feed - I think nosema has been suggested as a possible reason in the past; however you mention that out of the two colonies, it's the nuc is not taking the feed - how recently has it been made up? Is it small in numbers so that there are not many bees to take the syrup down?

Thanks Adam, and other contributors - all comments much appreciated.

Actually, the nuc based hive is out performing the full colony. We got the nuc first, in early June, and the full colony about a month later. The nuc colony grew reasonably quickly from 5 frames to 10 and is now almost the same size as the other colony, which arrived with 11 fully drawn frames. It first colony is very well behaved and is taken syrup down quickly. Although I am new to this, it feels like the first colony is more active, but both are well stoked with healthy bees and queen right. It remains a mystery why the second, slightly larger, colony is only taken the syrup slowly, especially as it has less stores than the first.

I did wonder if we might be able to insert a new frame into the first colony and have them draw it out, given how active it is. Are there any views on whether this is likely to work?
 #720  by AdamD
 21 Sep 2018, 13:44
There's time to get the odd frame drawn out and filled. In fact I robbed a frame of sealed stores from a colony a week or so ago to give to a smallish nuc; the large colony will find it much easier to lay a couple of kg of stores down than a small nuc that needs to build up before winter.
I would not be considering doing a shook swarm and replacing all the frames at this time of year though!
 #762  by Chrisbarlow
 23 Sep 2018, 20:05
Newbee wrote:
21 Sep 2018, 13:24
I did wonder if we might be able to insert a new frame into the first colony and have them draw it out, given how active it is. Are there any views on whether this is likely to work?
I have an out apiary that is quite far away from where I live that has several hives there, Some colonies need extra stores so I place emtpy boxes with drawn comb inside on top of active colonies in my home apiary and feed these to fill those new boxes and then take a full box of stores and put it on the colony in the out apiary. You can easily over feed one colony and then take frames out for another colony.

As for drawing out new frames with foundation, my colonies in Leeds, West Yorkshire dont appear to be drawering new comb at the moment or if they are, its very little. So I would suggest using drawn comb only.

As for your original question. Same happens to me and I dont know either but I suspect disease does play a part but that is speculation on my part. I do find that better insulated feeders (poly miller feeders) or frame feeders are much more successfull at getting the bees to take syrup down as the night time temps drop.