Figured since our season has kicked off with an early bloom of Almonds I'd post some results of late swarm I hived on Labor day 2013. It was a small swarm, covered about 2.5 frames. We were in a complete pollen and nectar dearth since August so they got a frame feeder with 1:1 and 1/2lb of Beepro. They actually downed the patty pretty quick but kind of stalled out on the second offering, only eating about 1/3 of it. By Late October, they were between 3 and 4 frames of bees and I wanted them to keep growing, and lucky enough I live in Keith Jarret's neighborhood and was able to bum some Nutrabee off him. In mid November, I put on about a 3lb patty right over the middle of the cluster and gave them about 1 liter of 2:1. We had a pretty cold December but a very warm January with not much blooming in the neighborhood but you can see the bees did very well. I scraped off the Mann Lake stuff when I added the Nutrabee since they weren't touching it much, I did the same with a few of my nucs and I have to say I'm very impressed and happy with the results. I popped the hive open this afternoon, and it was a little on the cooler side so the bees stayed between the frames but I'd say they're at about 7 frames of bees and doing very well. Pretty good field force coming in as well with a lot of almond and mustard pollen.
