Feeding nucs during dearth?

I would reduce the entrance to a 1 or 2 bee size and feed like you stated and feed 2 to 1 if you want them to store it, and 1 to 1 to build them up?(using sugar and water only, no HBH ec.).Could you take a couple frames of brood and nurse bees from your big hive and give your nucs one each, that would get them going quicker?

Put the feed as far from the entrance as you can, this will help keep other bees from finding it. Make sure you don't have leaks or drips that show up outside, too, as that will rapidly attract robbers.

A boost of brood and stores will help tremendously, and I would feed heavily, also put on some protein. You want them to build up as fast as possible, fall is coming fast!

I have a tiny July swarm that I'm trying to work up to overwintering nuc size, will be getting a frame of emerging brood next week once the brood the new queen laid has emerged. I want enough bees in there to buffer adding a whole frame of new ones.

Peter

Peter

Good point about drips and leaks on the outside. As for feeding pollen, there is plenty in Atlanta always, and my past attempts to feed pollen have slimed the hive because of SHB. So, no pollen for them, just 2:1 syrup. I will think about a frame of
capped brood later on. Thanks a lot.

I only use internal feeders, and my nucs still were robbed. Slap on robber screens. They are very easy to build...even I could make them, and I am no good at woodworking at all. All my hives, strong and small, have them now.

I even had attempts to rob when I used frames of honey instead of sugar syrup for the nucs. UGH.

You could take frames of food from the colony and give to the nucs, then feed the colony to replace their food stores.

AR Beekeeper said:

You could take frames of food from the colony and give to the nucs, then feed the colony to replace their food stores.

Click to expand...

I am with AR. just learned first hand , when tree of my new nucs were robbed, they had entrance reduces and frame feeders. I found a note on here, and removed the feeders, fed the strong hives and moved frames to the weak ones, the nucs were failing they are gaining strength rapidly now. A far better result for me.

psfred said:

A boost of brood and stores will help tremendously, and I would feed heavily, also put on some protein. You want them to build up as fast as possible, fall is coming fast!

Peter

Click to expand...

What kind of protein do you recommend? My bees have ignored MegaBee in the past. My deadouts from last year had a conspicuous absence of pollen.

Many thanks
Shane

I currently have 3 nucs i am feeding with fatbeeman style top feeders. They have a bunch of comb to draw and will need to build up enough bees so that in another 6 weeks they have a decent number of forgers to collect fall goldenrod for winter and have enough bees to make it through winter.

Im feeding about a gallon a week to 3 nucs. They would take more if I gave it to them. The few foragers they currently have are busy brining in pollen at the moment.

stavros said:

my past attempts to feed pollen have slimed the hive because of SHB. So, no pollen for them, just 2:1 syrup.

Click to expand...

Since you are going to feed 2:1 anyhow, you can whip some MegaBee into it and it will stay suspended in the syrup. Like you I cannot feed pollen patties because of SHBs, so this is my bypass way of feeding pollen sub. The recipe is available on the MegaBee site and the stuff itself is available from Kelley's or Dadant. I add a drop of lemongrass EO to the gallon of syrup and the bees take it gladly.

HTH

Rusty

I put robbing screens on all nucs. I have had no problems with robbing, and have seen on ill effects on the bees in the nuc. They adjust to walking down the inside of the screen in less than a day. I also leave the robbing screen on the single deeps when I move them over from the nucs. I remove them after the bees have a large enough population to defend themselves.