Feeding our bees.

Sometimes our bees need a bit of a top up feed. It might be because the weather is being unkind and they can’t get out to collect nectar, because there’s a gap in local forage e.g. June Gap, because we want to top up their supplies for winter, or because we want to give a new colony a helping hand – this would be a nuc or a collected swarm.

What to feed?

We should always use white granulated sugar or a product made from white granulated sugar – never ‘raw’ or ‘unbleached’ sugar because these types of sugar contains too many impurities that can make our bees very sick. White granulated sugar is as clean a food as our bees need.

Historically, and if fairly urgent, some beekeepers would just simply cut an X into a 2lb packet of white granulated sugar, pour in a cup of water and leave it for a few moments, then invert the pack over the bees. When the paper was thrown out of the front it meant two things – the colony was still alive and that they might want some more. So feeding bees doesn’t have to be hard or complicated and all the fancy measuring isn’t as crucial as we’re led to believe.

What to feed, and when.

For most commercial beekeepers there’s no real choice; it’s a commercially produced invert syrup or nothing. These syrups, which only come in one strength, are more expensive but then time is also expensive. It would take one lone bee farmer many, many, hours to mix enough gallons of syrup to feed several hundreds of colonies; time that is better spent on other beekeeping-related tasks.

Basic Assessment notes - Part 4: Beekeeping

The Basic Assessment's syllabus is very broad. In fact it's massive. It is an introduction to every aspect of beekeeping except microscopy.

The later, much more challenging, modules cover only one knowledge area at a time and in much greater depth. The module exams are written papers, taken under exam conditions.

Assessing a beekeeper's knowledge for the Basic comprises a practical hive inspection followed by oral questions. Both should be completed within an hour - the examiner is expected to cover as much as they can, to make sure there are no serious knowledge gaps. So it's a fairly quick sweep through as much of the syllabus as possible, otherwise the examiner will end up running late which can prove stressful for candidates who are waiting for their assessment.