28/12/2022
Summer forage short fall
Despite the rain and floods of this year, we are now experiencing a shortage of forage.
I speculate a few reasons: unstressed plants, a relative dry spell of weather and the natural flowering irregularities of native plants.
However a honey flow will eventuate. Meantime, we need to keep hives healthy and strong. Starved bees make no honey.
This means we need to supplement feed. Feeding bees in times of shortage maintains hive strength and moral. In turn this protects hives from pests and disease. Strong hives resist outside challenges. Weak, starved hives soon fall apart.
Hungry strong hives will also plunder small new hives. Robbing their stores and killing the young. We have a number of new hives with beautiful new queens. Feeding also protects these young hives from robbing.
What to feed?
Bees need energy in the form of sugar. This time of year we feed 1:1 ratio sugar syrup. This is made 1 kg white sugar to 1 kg water, mixed over low heat to dissolve the sugar. The solution is fed in an open container with straw or dry grass to prevent drowning.
Bees also need protein. The most efficient and productive method is to use a proprietary brand bee feed. We use Custom Bee Feed. This is offered in open containers placed around the bee yard. Hungry bees relish this product. They carry it back to their hive for processing into ‘bee bread’. This in turn is feed to young growing bees.
In no way are our bees fed for honey production. To my mind, feeding bees sugar to produce honey, would involve huge amounts of effort and expense. The relative small amounts we feed our bees maintains their health and nothing more.
This works well for our bee yard. Open feeding might not be suitable in a suburban setting. In our case it is very safe and efficient.
