Laurence Edwards explains when to feed bees sugar syrup and why timing matters. Use a 2:1 sugar-to-water mix or invert sugar in fall, never 1:1. Stop feeding by early October in the UK, though warm weather can extend it to November if temperatures stay around 11-12°C.
In this video, we're going to talk about feeding syrup. When's the right time of the year to feed syrup? But more importantly, how late on in the year can you feed syrup effectively, and what mix you should go for? Now, I read so many comments on Facebook about people getting really stressed with different quantities in terms of syrup mixes, and I see someone put on there the other day, well, you can just feed 2:1 at any point and the bees will just readily accept it. Why bother watering it down to 1:1, or why bother ever making up 1:1? And it's a really good point. There is literally no scenario where the bees will not take down 2:1. The only reason that I would ever feed 1:1, which is 1 kilogram of sugar to 1 liter of water, or whatever units you want to use, the only reason I would ever use that is in the spring to simulate a flow, to get the bees going, to get them to turn that feed into brood as opposed to storing it in the combs. 2:1 sugar syrup, so 2 kilograms of sugar to 1 liter of syrup, is perfect for this time of the year because you're making it so the bees don't have to do any work to get the moisture content correct to store it in the frames. Even better than that, and this is what I use now, invert sugar syrup in a jerry can. It's definitely a little bit more expensive, although the price of sugar at the moment has kind of brought these 2 a little bit closer together, but for me, the convenience of invert sugar syrup is amazing. Comes in a 14 kilogram jerry can like this. It literally never ever goes off. It stays fresh for years and years and years. Just completely disregard the dates on there. I've had some from 4 or 5 years ago that have been sealed that you open them up and there's no fermentation whatsoever. And because it's inverted sugar syrup, you never get that mould building on it. So you don't need to put any additives in there to stop that mould growth. Now the question that I get asked a lot of the time is how late on in the year can you feed invert sugar syrup? And the answer is incredibly late on into the year. Like, you will not believe how late you can go into the year feeding invert sugar syrup and for the bees not only to be fed the syrup but to take it down, to process it, and to actually cap it over. The beauty of invert sugar syrup is it doesn't need to be capped over. So the bees, as long as they've taken it out of the feeder and put it into the cells, it becomes accessible to them And they'll just keep it uncapped throughout the whole of the year, which actually reduces their work a little bit. It means they don't actually have to uncap it to use it in the winter. But feeding is a bit of a dark art when it comes to the end of the season. And believe me, I fell into this trap when I was starting out keeping bees. And that is feeding your bees too early. You clog up the brood nest and you really do cause a lot of issues. You do it with the best intentions thinking, I want to make sure my bees have got enough food. But what you're doing is you're blocking access for the queen to lay, and you're blocking access for them to bring in pollen, which they need to rear brood. So if you want me to give you like a firm date in terms of when you should be doing your last feeds in the UK, you're pretty safe around the first or second week of October. For me, that's it. The ivy's done here, first or second week of October. The bees are not going to be collecting kilograms and kilograms of ivy nectar, so I'm safe to go in at that point and backfill them completely with 2:1 invert syrup. However, if you get like a real Indian summer where it's warm towards the end of October, even into November, they will take down syrup. I've seen them do it. Even when you fill the feeders up last week of October, first week of November, if you're getting 11 or 12°C and you've got them in poly hives where the bees inside the hives are really nice and protected from that cold outside, they will just continue to feed on it. So do not think you've missed your opportunity to feed. It's now the last week of September at the moment. The bees are busy working on the ivy. I've just merged these colonies together. You might have seen the video. The final ones are just going in there now, but they are a little bit light on feed already. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna open them up, give them a really small feed. Might still get a few more days of the ivy bringing stuff in, but we're getting towards the point now where I can backfill everything with invert sugar syrup. And then come the second week of October, middle of October is my cutoff. I'll come around and I'll backfeed everything. Now it's a very interesting point why I like to go for the middle of October. You do tend to fall into like a management system, especially when you get more than one colony, and especially when you get into like the hundreds of colonies, or 100 colonies let's say. My beekeeping management system for honey extraction is around the middle of August. So I go in middle of August, take all of my honey off, put my Apivar strips in for my varroa treatments, and I give the bees a feed. I continue trickle feeding for the next 8 weeks, and then after those 8 weeks are up, the Ivy Flow is just coming to an end or is just finished, I go back round one last time, top up with this syrup here at the exact same time that I go back round and I take my Apivar strips out after the 8-week cycle. Really efficient way of managing your bees, and the timings, although you forgo a little bit of that late season honey, sorry Aaron again, pays you back double next season when you've got super, super healthy bees.
