Early Feeding for Overwintered Nucs

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today I'm going to show you how I feed and prepare my nucs for winter. So feeding nucs and getting them ready for winter is, is quite similar to feeding your colonies and getting them ready for winter, but is slightly different. Now I've got quite a lot of experience in overwintering nucs. I've done it for about 6 or 7 years now and I've got a really, really good success rate in getting these nucs through the winter. And the reason that I've got such a good success rate is that I follow quite a strict process in terms of getting them ready for winter. Now the same applies for all colonies, but the first thing that you need to say with this is that you need strong nucs to go through the winter. So that doesn't mean that you need a 6-frame nuc, that doesn't mean that you need a 12-frame nuc. What that means is that the box in which you're keeping your bees is absolutely jam-packed full of bees. Whether that's a 6-frame, a 12-frame, a 3-frame, a Mini Plus, it doesn't matter, but what you want is a lot of bees in the smallest box possible. So I find with all my colonies, a good rule of thumb to have is that if you're coming into kind of middle of August, around September time, you want to see a little bit of bearding. Bearding is a really, really good thing to see in a colony that's heading into winter. What that means is there's too many bees for the size of the box that they're in. Now, do not mistake that at this time of the year for thinking they need extra space. So what you would do normally in the season is you might add an additional brood box, Or you might add an additional super in the middle of August. Back end of August, you definitely don't want to do that. You almost want to encourage some of this bearding to take place. And now what I mean there is don't have 50% of your bees hanging outside the front of your colony. They'll get damaged by the wind and the rain. You want to minimize that bearding as best as you possibly can, but the bearding is a good indication that the bees have filled the cavity that you've given them. So that's my first tip. Make sure that the amount of bees is suitable for the box that you're keeping them in. And that can be, like I say, double colony, single nuc, double nuc, little mini mating nuc, doesn't matter. You want to see a little bit of bearding. The next tip, and this is what I'm doing today's visit, so we're kind of last week of July here, you're looking at the colonies and thinking, do we need to feed? And my strategy isn't blindly feed every nuc. Blindly feeding every nuc can actually do quite a lot of damage, and that damage is that you fill up the frames with stores and then the queen doesn't have any room to lay, which means a colony can't expand. And then once they've used up those stores, the queen has to lay really, really quickly to lay the winter bees to get them through the winter, and there's not enough bees to keep the winter brood warm. So you get a real decline in colony strength. So what you need to do is you need to go through each and every single colony, every single nuc, and kind of ascertain whether you think they need feeding. And what I'm really doing at this time of year is I'm feeding them in order to stimulate brood rearing if they need it. So that's, that's the aim of the game here. We're not feeding them at the back end of July, early August for for them to keep those stores through until winter. That's really not what we're looking to do. They're going to burn through that stores and they're going to turn that into winter bees. So it's a real balancing act and we'll go in and we'll show you exactly the process and I'll pick out a couple of nucs. I'll show you one that definitely needs feeding. I'll show you one that definitely doesn't need feeding. And then you can kind of adjust it and make your own decisions on that. What I will say though is it's good practice just to get all of your nucs into a position where they can accept feed at this time of year. I always keep all of my feeders on my nucs throughout the whole year. Don't see any reason to take them off. Took a few off this year, set them aside to get them cleaned, and a squirrel ate them. So I was really annoyed by that. So they're not coming off anymore. And if I'm going to take them off to clean them, I'll take them off, clean them on the day, put them straight back on wet just to avoid any damage. But by having the feeders always on the nucs means they're always readily available for an emergency feed, and it saves storing another item. Because us beekeepers have to store a lot of items. So another thing to mention in this video is the timing of your varroa treatments, and I've mentioned that in a few videos at this time of year. You need to kind of make sure that you're doing your varroa treatments, and you need to make sure that you're choosing varroa treatments that can work alongside feeding. That's really what you want to be doing. You don't want to have to have a situation where it's either or and you're feeding or you're waiting for a varroa treatment to finish before you feed. If you select ones where you can do them simultaneously, it gives you a really, really good chance of getting that nuc through the winter. So then what is the end game here? What are we looking to achieve by feeding the bees ultimately? It's different for different stages of the year. So like I say, end of July, early August, you might not need to feed. If I am feeding at this time of year, I'm doing it to stimulate the colony, to expand, to fill the void that they're in. So if I go and have a look at a colony and it's on 3 or 4 frames of bees, I'm going to feed it because I want the outer frames either drawn or I want the outer frames to kind of be full of bees. So I'm going to give them maybe a 1:1 syrup. Doesn't matter which syrup you give them, 2:1 or 1:1 is fine. They will turn 2:1 into bees and they will use 1:1 as storage if they need to, and they'll fan it down. I'm just a fan of 2:1 syrup. I don't use anything else really. So 2:1 kind of any time of the year is absolutely fine. If I'm a bit short on 2:1, I can water it down, turn it into 1:1. But don't get too caught up on the proportions of the syrup. It really doesn't matter. As long as it's above 1:1, the bees will use it, make good use of it. Now the exception to that is at the end of the year, don't use anything other than 2:1. Going into winter, it needs to be as thick as you can possibly get it. 2:1 syrup or some invert sugar syrup. So then at the end of the season, once you've got a nice big box full of bees, then what you're doing is you're feeding to get them up to weight to get them through the winter. It's very different then. They're already kind of in the process of breeding those winter bees or getting ready to breed the winter bees. You don't need to feed them to stimulate any further growth because they've already filled the void. You're feeding them solely to store. to get them through the winter months. So you need to kind of work out where you are on that journey, but get yourself set up nice and early. So I say last weekend in July, first weekend in August, that's when I look to kind of get all of my nucs prepared, go and do a first round of feeding if they need it, and just kind of get things started. So that's how I get my nucs prepared for winter. So we're going to have a look inside the nucs and I'll show you exactly what I mean. So when you're assessing the colonies to see whether they need a feed or not, the first thing to do before you even open them up, give them a lift. Now that colony there, it's got some really nice weight to it, so I'm already thinking that probably doesn't need a feed. I'm going to get in there though, have a look, show you some of the frames, and see where we are. So again, Feeling this colony, I can feel it's got some really nice weight to it already. The bees are across 6 frames. I know there's going to be a couple of frames in here with some really good stores in there. So what I'm looking to see is I want to see a queen, I want to see eggs and I want to see stores, and then I want to make sure that the balance is correct. So the first frame that I'll always pick out is the middle frame. And as you can see from the middle frame here, I can already tell from frame 1 that I'm not going to feed this colony. And the reason is, is on frame 1, I've got a ring, a nice ring of syrup in there where I give them a little sip already. And then I can see just a few dotted round. I can see cells in the middle of the middle frame that they've started to fill with syrup. So that's a sign for me this colony has got too much feed in it and it's not got enough space to expand and to lay bees. So I'll show you some of the other frames as well. So just by looking at that middle frame, I can already tell that the outer frames are going to be jam-packed with stores just by looking at that middle frame. So I'll get inside and I'll show you what I mean. So again, that is frame number 5, or frame number 2, depending on which way around you want to look at it. Really nice brood area, really nice band of syrup all the way around, but then I've got bits of syrup dotted around. So what I want to see this time of year is I want to see these areas here where a bee has emerged, I want to see an egg go in there because I want to see the brood maintaining the size. Getting ready to raise the winter bees. I don't want them storing syrup in there. So that is a sign for me. If there's syrup around the edge and there's syrup in the cells when they've emerged, this colony does not need a feed. So then this was the last frame and it's not capped yet, but it is heavy and it's full of syrup. So I've given these guys one feed already and they've put all of that into this final frame. So basically got a full frame of stores at the edge. But this nuc here is, is pretty much textbook where I want my bees to be at this time of year. They're not massively kind of bearding out the front, but they're almost perfectly filling the void in which they're in. First week of August, that's where I want to see my bees. I want to see them filling the box, 4 or 5 frames of brood, lots of stores. Um, But I don't want— and I want to see eggs, I want to see the queen laying, and that means that they're in a really, really good position to get themselves into winter. So now that doesn't mean you've checked these on the 1st of August, therefore they don't need feeding. That's definitely not what I'm saying. It's a kind of rolling 2-week cycle that I do. I look at the nucs, so I'll come back in a couple of weeks. I know these guys are going to be fine for at least a couple of weeks, even if it rains, but I'll come back in a couple of weeks and I'll make a judgment then. We've got some really nice weather forecast in North Wales, so these guys are going to be be cramming nectar in over the next kind of 2 weeks. So it's going to make it even more difficult to kind of enable them to have the space to keep laying. So the last thing I want to do with this colony is to feed it. Do not feed this colony. That's exactly where you want to get them to. Okay, so this one, I've got a 12-frame nuc, and I went round a lot of my colonies about 6 weeks ago putting on these doubles to make sure that they weren't going to get too big for the colony and they were going to swarm. And now I've chosen this one as a specific example because this one is a little bit slower than the rest. But if you have a look in the middle here, the top is essentially empty. So I definitely don't want this top 6 frame to be on here at the moment. And if you've got a colony that's full, you definitely don't want to be putting the top 6 frames onto here at the moment. As you can see, this is pretty much the smallest that we want to be at this time of year. This is a small colony. This one needs a boost and this one needs a feed. So I'll show you exactly how to do that now. So first off, take your top one and go and put that somewhere safe. Don't just put it on the floor because the queen may be in there. So what we need to do first is identify where the queen is. So we're going to take a look in here. So there's the queen. And what you can see on this frame No stores, no stores throughout the whole of the outer ring. So, so different from the other one, but we've got eggs and we've got worker brood. So we're in a nice position. This is an easy one to do. This is definitely a treat and feed. So if you look at that outer frame, it's just drawn comb, absolutely nothing in it, nothing at all. We want to make sure that is filled with syrup. So you can see just in the single apiary, 2 doors away from each other, the differences that you get between these nucs. So really, really simple course of action for this one. I'm going to add a frame of brood, emerging brood, because I've got 3 or 4 frames of bees. They can easily take that additional frame of brood. I'm going to make sure that all of the bees from the top half are in the bottom half, and then I'm going to feed and I'm going to give them a really, really good glug of syrup. I'm going to completely feed— fill that syrup feeder up. And then this colony stands a really, really good chance of expanding to get through winter. So we're the last week of July at the moment. There's still plenty of time for these guys to expand. They need the bees to do that. They need the forage to do that. But they're on 4 frames at the moment. They only need to get up to 6 really strong frames of bees. That's an easy, easy way for us to get them through the winter. So that's what we're going to do. So just go to, go to the other half. Shake the bees in. There might not be many in there, but you might as well just shake them in. Then you want to go through and check and get your best brood frames. So don't go for the ones with holes in, don't go for the dark ones, go for the nice light full-drawn combs. You want to go and get a nice big frame of brood from one of the nucs that's too strong, so don't weaken any of your good nucs. Go and find one that's absolutely bursting at the seams and take the best frame of emerging brood. So you want to take a nice frame of emerging brood, or just make sure that it's fully sealed. This one's got the added benefit that it's got some feed on it as well, some readily accessible feed for the new colony. Bit of a bonus for them. And all you want to do is take that, obviously do an inspection, make sure there's no disease on it. This one's completely disease-free. And then you want to place that in the middle of the colony that you're donating it to. Now, when you're putting this colony back together, we're converting it now from that 12-frame format back down into a 6-frame format. You want to reduce the size to fit the colony. I've got some other ones here that they filled that 12 frames. These guys were very small, they've not built it up, so I'm reducing that size down. I'm matching the box to the colony. So then I'm taking some homemade 2:1 sugar syrup. This is going to be another video where I show you how to make your own 2:1 sugar syrup using just granulated sugar, and we're going to fill this feeder up. So it takes about 3 or 4 litres in this feeder. Got plenty of space for them to store it in there. I want them to expand, so we're going to fill this one right to the top. Obviously, when you're feeding, make sure there's no drips whatsoever. You don't want to cause robbing and you definitely don't want to attract any wasps. The wasps will smell that syrup, and if they get in on a colony like that, they can tear them apart in a couple of days. So I always reduce the entrance size down, put the queen excluder function on it now, take it down to 1 or 2 bee spaces, give them a really, really good chance of defending that syrup. If you take that precaution and make sure there's no spills, robbing is quite rare if you take those precautions. If you put the spills and spill syrup around, that colony will get robbed out all day long. So there we go, that's 2 very, very different colonies in a single apiary. Got one colony definitely doesn't need any feed at the moment, monitor it, come back in 2 weeks, make another decision. They're in a really good position. Got this colony here that was in way too big a container for the volume of bees, so we've halved the volume. We've gone down from 12 frames to 6 frames. We've added a frame of emerging brood, make sure it's capped, and then we've put some 2:1 sugar syrup on there, and they're going to use that to create additional brood, expand the size of the colony, And then they're going to use it to start storing that for winter as well. So there we have it, a couple of different nucs, different sizes of nuc. I've got both of those sizes of nucs through the winter really, really successfully. Last weekend in July, at the moment there's plenty of time for the smaller nucs there to expand and to become bigger nucs. So really, you really don't need to worry about that, they will expand, you just need to keep on pumping them with syrup. To the point where they're turning that syrup into eggs, then into brood, then into bees, and you're building that real foraging unit. So when you get the winter stores into them, they'll suck it down, and then you've got a nice big colony that fills that void. And then the other colony that we looked at there, a really big strong colony, I definitely wouldn't want to feed that colony because all they would do is they would backfill all of that brood space with nectar or with the stores that I'm giving them, and then there's no room for the queen to lay. So then what you see is a massive decline in the size of that colony, which risks them going into winter with not enough bees, which is kind of counterintuitive, but that's exactly what'll happen. And then they risk kind of being too small to maintain brood temperature over the winter. So it's a real juggling act and it does need a bit of fine-tuning, but as long as you've got syrup available to feed them and you can go in and look at the colony and judge for yourself what they need, you should get them to the point where you're coming into kind of last week of August, or early September, middle of September, and all of your hives are balanced, nicely balanced, and that's what you're looking to do. So the final thing that I didn't mention, and I've mentioned this in a previous video, there's nothing wrong with swapping brood in between these nucs as long as you're confident and you do it within the apiary and you've checked them for disease and there's no signs of any disease. You can take a frame of brood, emerging brood, from that strong colony and you can go and put it into the smaller colony assuming that they've got enough bees to cover the brood and keep it warm. And that's a really effective way of killing 2 birds with one stone. So you're reducing the burden on that big colony, so there's not too many bees in there and they don't have to beard all out of the front, and they can kind of use some of their additional foraging capacity to draw out that foundation frame that you've put in. And then the smaller colony, colony benefits from that additional frame of brood and gives them a massive boost after 4 weeks once all that brood's emerged and then they backfill it all again with eggs. So I would highly recommend balancing the colonies like that, and that gives you a really, really kind of good way of getting them through. The final thing that I'd like to reemphasize on this video though is that that big colony there, don't think that you need to add another brood box onto that colony. It's a bit too late for that here. Like, for me, I like, I really like the double configuration. So you've got 6 frames and 6 frames, so you've got a 12-frame nuc going into winter. I think it's a really good configuration, but I definitely wouldn't be adding any brood boxes to colonies kind of first week in August. They're not going to expand up into that to create brood, or if they do, it'll be a very small amount here in North Wales. All they're likely to do is fill it up with syrup, and you're just going to end up with a top-heavy nuc that's got too much syrup in it. And then that leaves you with a really rubbish problem in the spring, is that you've just got loads of frames that are just full of stores, and then you've got to go through the process of kind of trying to get rid of the stores. And obviously you can't use it because it's contaminated, it might contaminate your honey. So not a nice problem to have. You're much better off really cramming them into the smallest box possible And that's how I get the success in overwintering the nucs. So that's it for the video. I hope you've enjoyed this one. Making nucs is really one of my favourite things. Love making nucs, love doing the queen rearing, love seeing the beginners take the nucs away and watching the bees kind of flourish and people sending me pictures. So if you've got a nuc off me, please do continue to send me the pictures and videos of your colonies. I really do enjoy it. So thanks for watching. Please hit the subscribe button. Please hit the bell so you're notified of every video. And I'll see you next time. Bye.