feeding

[SunnyBee]

Do you stop feeding sugar water once the bees start bring in nector ?

[mmiller]

Depends. If you have an established hive with drawn comb then you have to stop feeding so you don't end up with adulterated honey. A newly installed package on foundation should be fed to draw comb.

Mike

[SunnyBee]

On a newley nuc instaled in to a 10 frame deep brude box with new foundation, i should keep feeding them? Do they bulid the come with suger water then fill it with honey? This is my first bloom crop up coming and all my foundation is new. They will have to build cone on every thing. I thought once the bloom crop started the bees would use that to build cone and fill with honey. I just do not want to over feed or feed them at the wrong time.

[Michael Bush]

I do once they have some capped stores...

[tommyt]

Citrus is just starting "Tampabay" don't know exactly
where you are but if your in good citrus I think the
Bees will hit the real thing and stop feeding in the sugar
Water if they continue to do both maybe you can just
save what they store and feed it back to them this coming
winter or use it to feed splits

Tommyt

[SunnyBee]

tommyt I am in south de soto co. What stores are you meaning to take away from them to feed at a later time? I can see stoping feeding sugar water but how can you take honey away if they are making honey? I have 2 hives with a med. honey super on top of the brud deep super. This was for them for over the winter but i still gave them suger water. Onec they start bringing in nector i will be putting another med. honey super on top. I am un clear of what stores to take away.
I still have 4or5 nucs to move in to 10 frame deep burd moxes over the next 3 weeks. I will be feeding them once i move them in to there new home.

[tommyt]

Sorry I didn't get back to this
what I meant was, if you have full frames in the hives from when you had sugar water on them it maybe
just that and not honey
I would take those frames extract and save that sugar/nectar for this coming fall/winter feed and not
save it as human consumption
When the spring nectar is flowing which is starting now they are going to make some of the best honey of the year IMHO

Tommyt

[Michael Bush]

I don't see the gain in extracting and then feeding back. You go the the trouble of removing it and make the bees go to the trouble of storing and capping it. Why not leave it as capped stores?

[throrope]

Every time I fed in spring, once the nectar arrived, the girls stopped taking the sugar syrup. Made no difference with new packages, splits or established colonies. I'm in SE PA

In fall, once the weather set in, they left it alone no matter what their stores. I just pulled off a full feeder from a package that didn't make it through the winter.

My girls never seem to do what everyone says they should. I guess they have a mind of their own.

Since the hives are in the back yard, this year the plan is to feed small amounts regularly and watch. The plastic miller style top feeders I use have a screen the separates the bees from me making feeding not an elaborate affair.

[Nantom670]

I have heard of some beek that feed sugar water as long as the bees keep using it. Doesn't that ruin the quality of the stored honey? Is there any way to test honey to see if it has a high sugar water content?

[sqkcrk]

Once it is "honey" there won't be any sugar water content. Moisture content, but not sugar water content. One can of course lab analyze the sugars and identify what they are.

[Michael Bush]

>I have heard of some beek that feed sugar water as long as the bees keep using it. Doesn't that ruin the quality of the stored honey?

Yes. Not to mention they will backfill the brood nest and swarm...