Can You Feed Your Bees Too Much?

In this video, we're going to talk about feeding, and more specifically, we're going to talk about feeding your bees too much going into winter. Now, the bees in this apiary all really needed a feed today. There is no flow on whatsoever, and the bees are really robbing out all of the little cracks in any hive that they can get their hands on. Got a bad robbing situation here today, hence why we've got lots of flying bees that are making a nuisance of themselves. I've been round, I've been feeding my colonies. There's no flow on, so I've been doing what I call trickle feeding. I'm doing it to build the colonies up, but more importantly than that, I'm doing it to make sure the colonies have enough food. And the question that I get asked a huge amount of times is, can you overfeed your bees? And the short answer and the very simple answer is yes, and it does a huge amount of damage. If you just keep on plugging away 12 litres, 12 litres, 12 litres of syrup, all you will do is you will just completely restrict that colony's ability to lay any bees whatsoever. All that means is that later on in the year when they start working through those stores, that's when they're going to do their winter bees, and you really restrict the size of that colony going into winter. So erring on the side of caution is okay, give them a little bit more than you think they might need, but if you're going into a colony in the middle of September and they are nailed to the ground, you need to get inside there and you probably need to take out some of those excess frames of stores. In order to give that colony sufficient room for the queen to lay, to build up the number of winter bees to make sure they get through the winter. Now when you keep bees for a long time, you do get used to kind of the weight of colonies, and I can feel at the moment these bees are putting on weight. The ivy is just about starting to come out here, middle of September, and they'll probably get like 2 or 3 weeks on the ivy, hopefully bringing in some good amounts of pollen. But they would definitely go out and forage on that ivy regardless of how much stores they have in there. It's just what bees do. If there is an open nectar source and an open pollen source, they will go and they will forage on it. So if the bees go away and forage on it and bring it back in and you've already got 10 frames of stores and nowhere for that brood to lay, they are just going to come back in and keep on piling it in. And you will restrict that queen down to nothing. She will not be able to find a single cell to lay a single egg. That is not good news. So end of the season, early September, middle of September, if you've taken all your supers off, you've got your treatments on, you can start to feed the bees. But the mantra needs to be little and often. Just get them through to the point where they're getting the ivy. That's what's important. And that is kind of like the barometer that I use, that you just need to keep them steady until you get them to the ivy. Now say we get to the ivy and it's just a washout and you get 4 weeks of 12 degrees and no nectar is yielded and the bees can't go out and fly, then it's really easy to boost the amount of stores that the bees have within like 2 or 3 days. So the feeder that I've got in here, I've got a 6 litre English feeder, but then the Paynes Langstroth nucs that I've got, they've got like a 4 or 5 litre feeder in there as well. If you come in on a strong colony in the first week of October, And give them 6 litres of syrup, they'll take it down in a couple of days. And you can just go back in, another 6 litres, another 6 litres. Before you know it, in the space of a week, you've fed them like 15 or 20 litres of syrup. Invert syrup, I should add, 2:1 syrup at that time of the year. Nice, thick, heavy syrup. And you can build that weight up very, very easy, very late on. If you do it too early, you're compounding those issues. So I'm going to open up this colony here. It's not a good day to be opening them up 'cause there is just no flow on whatsoever. And there was an active, robbing situation here before, or show you the active robbing situation. It was a little bit crazy, but I'm just going to give you an indication of kind of what is, I would say, average. This probably here is like an average one that we have, maybe erring on a little bit too much stores. But anyway, stop talking, let's get inside and show you exactly what I mean. So this is my feeding setup here. It's a little bit bodged. The bees can actually get up through this crack. The feeder doesn't fit in there, so I've just wedged it in. And then I've put loads of hay or straw, I always forget which one it is, and just chuck that in there so the bees can't drown. You can see the bees coming up there taking a feed, so there's a little bit of feed accessible for them, but really you're talking maximum of about a couple of litres of feed. Now if I take that box off, you'll see the bees starting to come out now, and all I'm doing here is I'm just lifting this, and I can feel this is heavy, so I've probably already fed them a little bit too much at the moment. But if I just blindly came in and started filling up that feeder again, I'd be compounding this issue. So do get in the habit of kind of trying to heft and trying to lift and even going in and actually taking a look to see the state of the stores in your colonies. Let's get inside this one and I'll show you every single frame and I'll show you how much stores they actually have. You can see on that one there, we've got a little bit of stores, we've still got a bit of foundation, and we've got a decent amount of open brood space as well. So already there, we've got maybe 75% of one frame that would be accessible for that queen to lay in if they drew it all out. Right, the next frame that we've got is probably 60 or 70% pollen and then mostly capped stores. Really nice side frame. This is the end frame. Great to see that they packed away so much pollen, but very, very limited space for the bees to do anything in that one. If you've got 10 frames like this, then you really are in trouble. So then this is really what I like to see. Good amount of capped brood at this point in the year. Couple of odd-looking cups in there as well, so I'm going to take a look in there, see if there's anything that's charged. Wouldn't expect it at this time of the year, especially with a colony that's not completely jam-packed. But again, you've probably got 50% capped stores, 50% capped brood that once it's emerged gives you that space for the queen to lay more. Gives you also the space for the bees to bring back the nectar and to store it, Along with some additional pollen. Next frame in, we've got our Apivar frame, a little bit of mangled foundation on it as well, but this is really good. Not got frame after frame of stores, you've got brood in there already, and again on that one, maybe 30 or 40% capped stores and then about 60 or 70% open brood. So then for me, this is exactly what I want to see going into winter, my 50/50 frame. If all of your frames are like this, 50/50, 50% capped stores, 50% capped brood, you are onto a winner. The bees there will emerge. You've got lots of bees that are going to emerge here. I'm counting it up, probably got 4 or 5 good frames of brood. Once they emerge, that's my winter bees. Once they emerge, they leave the bees the space to backfill with pollen and nectar from the ivy, and if they need a little top-up at the end, I'll give them that top-up. What you can't do is top up the bees with stores Before those winter bees are born. The brood that you see here, the capped brood, this is my winter bees. Same again, mostly brood, 70% brood, a good amount of stores. These bees here are absolutely nowhere near starving, but counting up, they've probably got 60 or 70% either empty space or capped brood. Really a good place to be. Now, as we move back out towards the edges, this is the second to last frame. You're seeing that brood nest contract, and I would say this one here, you've got 60% stores, 40% brood, but a good amount of weight in this frame. And then my final frame, really beautiful heavy pollen frame, maybe 50% pollen, 50% stores. The bees in this colony here are set up perfectly. So final question for this colony here, am I going to continue to feed them? Got a couple of litres of syrup down there. And the question is, yes, I'll give them those couple of litres, but there is no way I'm giving them any more syrup when they're looking like that before, like, the last week of September, maybe the first week of October. These bees have got more than enough stores to keep them through, and as long as we're getting good flying days into September, into the first week of October, the ivy will yield a huge amount of nectar and pollen, and these will set themselves up for winter. With very, very minimal intervention from me. At the absolute maximum, they will need one 6-liter feed at the end just to top them up, but I'm confident that I'll come back here 3 or 4 weeks' time and these will be nailed to the floor and they won't even need the final feed. So check your colonies inside, outside, make sure you heft, don't overfeed, err on the side of caution, do not let them starve, but overfeeding can be just as detrimental to your colony. Trying to find that happy balance in the middle.