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British Beekeepers Association Official Forum 

  • Time Between Feed & Honey Harvest

  • Beginners forum, ask beekeeping related questions and get help from other experienced beekeepers. Please use the Search Feature please to avoid duplicated threads
Beginners forum, ask beekeeping related questions and get help from other experienced beekeepers. Please use the Search Feature please to avoid duplicated threads
 #3948  by Japey Edge
 06 Jul 2019, 23:43
Hi everyone,

I am feeding my colonies at the moment as they are weak. My main two are an artificial swarm that I'm keeping separate rather than reuniting. They both have a few frames of foundation to build up, hence the feed.

My question is: How long after stopping a feed can I expect to be able to get honey rather than stored syrup?

It does feel like a silly question, with variables such as colony size, work rate, flow, number of frames and many other things I haven't thought of. Am I dreaming thinking they may draw their comb out in two weeks and then hopefully need a super another two weeks later? Probably. Especially since one only has a virgin queen and so has missed out on all this laying time...

Honey isn't priority, by any means. It would, however, be nice to try some this year. We'd like to have at least one jar.

I pulled some comb out of the feeder of the mini mating hive and it had some honey-coloured liquid in it. We tried it. It was syrup :lol:

I don't know what I'm expecting from this thread, but I am hoping it will spur you experienced beekeepers to spill your thoughts and experience :D
 #3951  by Caroline
 07 Jul 2019, 02:59
It's not uncommon not to have a honey crop in your first year of keeping bees. I don't know what your area is like for forage, but It sounds to me as if you need to concentrate on building up strong colonies to take into winter, it'll probably be a bit late for adding a super.

I'm wondering why your two colonies resulting from an artificial swarm both have several frames of foundation to be drawn, are weak and require feeding (unless due to poor weather and foraging conditions). If I had performed an artificial swarm I would expect the parent colony to have had all frames in the brood box drawn, as the procedure would be part of swarm control when the bees started to raise swarm cells. Using the Pagden method of artificial swarm, once the new queen had emerged and mated she could lay to her hearts content, and there would only be one frame of foundation to be drawn; the new brood box with the original queen would be on the original stand, and with either a good flow or supplementary feeding would rapidly draw out the frames of foundation. Alternatively I would take out a nuc instead of doing a 'Pagden', but the parent colony would not then be weak.

If you split a colony to make increase, rather than as swarm prevention, the original colony needs to be strong before splitting; if it isn't and you still want to increase the number of colonies, then making up a small nuc would be best. Depending on conditions and time of year the nuc will either build-up to a full colony or to a 6 frame nuc, to be taken into winter.

If you have two weak colonies at the end of this month I would suggest uniting them, making sure the resultant colony is well prepared for winter.

You were correct in your original posting, everything depends on local conditions, strain of bee, colony size and health. An important thing to remember is that bees will move stores from a brood box to a super, so if you have wet syrup in brood frames and add a super the syrup may end-up in the super.
 #3955  by AdamD
 07 Jul 2019, 10:12
I wouldn't expect to get honey from a weak colony and I assume there are no supers on? If there is a decent amount of nectar available to them, you may not need to feed at the moment.
 #3983  by Japey Edge
 08 Jul 2019, 07:47
By weak I mean they were originally in one 11 frame colony with a super on, but made 2 QCs which I took down, followed by 3 QCs the next week. I ended up splitting them, old queen into Maisies poly nuc with 3 frames brood, 2 stores and a frame of foundation.
Took super off original and replaced the 5 frames with foundation.

I am happy keeping them separate as it means I have two colonies rather than just one.

I did think that they could just move the sugar syrup. Maybe no crop this year then. It's not a major Bummer, I want to keep these girls alive and happy more than anything.
 #3986  by Patrick
 08 Jul 2019, 11:08
Hi Jazz

I suspect any confusion that has arisen is the implication behind weak vs small. Weak suggests they should be bigger all other things being equal- in your case I think they are smaller than a full colony, but that is for entirely known reasons.

A small colony needing to draw out foundation out before the queen can even lay, then a further 3 weeks until new adult bees can start to replace older ones continually dying off, then a further gap until they become foragers themselves - you can quickly see how the season can whizz past before they can build up surplus nectar,

Also colonies that bring in a surplus over the colony day to day needs, have to have a large foraging workforce. Put crudely, the bigger the colony the bigger the potential surplus if the nectar is there to gather and the weather is good to fly. The reverse is also true however, a big colony can also quickly starve if those conditions are not met.

It isn’t a daft question at all. Fact is, a honey surplus to gather is the result of enough of the right bees at the right time in the right conditions.
 #3987  by Japey Edge
 08 Jul 2019, 12:05
Ah thanks Patrick - I will be working on learning and applying the correct terminology. So yes they are small but very active. It makes sense - I'll focus on getting them strong for winter. Honey will just be a bonus if it comes along.