In this episode of the "Making Splits for Winter" series, Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey demonstrates how to prepare an overwintering nucleus colony (nuc) for winter by switching to heavy 2:1 invert syrup feeding. He explains the criteria for moving to heavy feeding (adequate brood, stores, and bee population), shows how to set up the queen excluder as a mouse guard, and details the use of large Paynes feeders (typically two full feeders) to raise the nuc’s weight. Edwards discusses assessing weight with a hive scale, adjusting feed based on consumption, and the importance of avoiding excess liquid syrup over winter to control hive moisture. He also outlines upcoming steps: removing Apivar strips, apibioxal vaping in December, fondant feeding in spring, and weighing the nucs. Throughout, he emphasizes the value of maintaining strong overwintered nucs as backup colonies.
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We're on to episode 11 of the Making Splits for Winter series. We're going to feed now with heavy 2:1 syrup. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. We have taken a 2-frame split in episode 1 to a 6-frame split jam-packed full of bees over 5 frames of brood treated for varroa in episode 10. We've been through Every single step in each of those episodes, and we've got to the point now where the bees are ready for winter. The final thing we need to do is get them up to weight, and that's what we're going to do in this video. We're going to feed heavy invert syrup. We saw in the last episode that the bees were strong. They were over 5 frames of brood. The queen was laying a really good-looking pattern. They had a nice rim of pollen, nice rim of stores, but the main thing I was looking for at that point is that lots of frames of brood, So between 4 to 6 frames of brood, brood in all stages, a decent amount of stores, a decent amount of pollen, and most importantly for me, a decent amount of bees. Bees boiling out. If you get a little bit of bearding, again, that's not the end of the world. Only when I get to that stage do I move on to heavy syrup feeding, invert syrup or 2:1 sugar syrup. Now I'm going to get my bee suit on. I'm going to go and feed this colony. I'm going to bring the feeders all the way up to the top. All the way up to the brim, and then I'm going to assess the weight by lifting them. So I'll do that in the next episode. I'll bring my hive scales along, I'll weigh the poly nuc, and I'll see how much it's weighing, and I'll probably go with another feeder full. I find in the Paynes feeders, they're quite big feeders, you get a lot of syrup into them. So I go, as a rough average, if you're using a Paynes feeder, I go for 2 feeders full of invert syrup, and that's what I use to get the bees up to weight for winter. So enough of me talking, I'll get my bee suit on, I'll get my smoker lit. Let's go and have a look at the bees and get them up to weight for winter. Right, first thing I'm going to do, 1st of October, we're moving into 2:1 sugar syrup feeding. I'm going to close the queen excluder on the nuc. Reason I do that is that it's a really good mouse guard. It's not going to 100% protect you from mice because they can bite through it, but it's a first line of defense. Do it while the colony's still strong, Shouldn't be any mice in there in the first week of October. So my rule of thumb, when you're going in with a heavy syrup, first week of October, get the mouse guard on, which is your queen excluder on your nuc. If you're doing it in a big colony and you've got a big open entrance, definitely get your mouse guards on as well. Don't want rodents or vermin in your hives over winter. So here's our nucleus of bees, and what's very, very noticeable at this time of year is how they're not flying up at me. And the reason they're not flying up at me is that it's getting cold. It's barely above 10 degrees here now because it's getting into the evening, and the bees don't want to know. They're thinking, why have you just taken that roof off? You're letting out all of our heat. Can you get on with it, please? But you look at the bees, they're doing really well. They're covering all those frames. We've been through all of this before. We're going to feed them today, but that is what you want your nucs look like before you move on to 2:1 feeding. So I'm going to get my invert syrup in. I'm going to fill that feeder up all the way up, and then I'll probably come back after 48 hours and fill it all the way up again. And then that's going to get my colonies up to weight for winter. So that's a 14-kilogram jerry can. I reckon we've added about 6 kilograms of invert there, so about 12 pounds, which is a really good amount. You might get away with that depending on how much they've taken in on the ivy. This one was pretty heavy, so I might not come back and fill it up all the way. If you come back a week later and they've not taken all of that down, then they definitely don't need any more. If you come back kind of 3 or 4 days later and they've taken it all down, I would suggest maybe giving them another half, giving them another full one just to see how they go. You don't want to leave liquid invert in that feeder over winter if you can get away with it, because it makes it a little bit more difficult for them to maintain the moisture in the hive. What's a good thing to do at this point though is just give them a little heft. Don't spill the syrup everywhere, just want to lift them up to feel what they're feeling like with that additional syrup in there, because that's roughly what we're going to be aiming for in terms of weight for the hive. Now I know from personal experience when I lift that up, that is not heavy enough for a nuc for me going over winter. You should feel it when you go to lift up a heavy nuc for winter, you should lift it up and you should walk away thinking, I did not think that nuc was going to weigh that much. It should be like it's bolted to the ground. You really should have a very heavy box. I filled that feeder all the way up to the top. I've lifted it up. They'll still fan that down just ever so slightly just to reduce the moisture content while they put it into the frames. So I'm going to lose a little bit of weight over the next week or so anyway. I'm definitely coming back and I'm going to give these guys another feed. I'll probably fill it up all the way. But this is so dependent on how your bees have foraged over the last 8 weeks. If it's been beautiful sunshine, they've been on the ivy, been on the Himalayan balsam, you might not even need to feed them. In this instance here, they definitely needed a feed because it's a big, strong, booming colony. It probably costs you a few pounds per colony more in terms of feed, but I'm doing this to get the bees through the winter because this is how I find it works for me. So there's my colony again. I do like messing around with bees when it's this cold because they just don't bother you at all. They're really nice and gentle. As you can see, we filled that feeder up all the way up to the top. The bees are straight on it, making good use of that. They're going to take that down so quick. Just make sure those twigs come up to the top. I like to give them some really good floats in the Payne's feeder, and then I find you don't get any dead bees drowning in it as well. But there we go, that's it, we're done for today. They're fed, that's going to get them really close to being up to weight. I'll probably come back, do another round that I'm not going to do a specific episode for, but then we'll come back for episode 12 and we're going to do some weighing. So I would have done another round of feeding here, I'll show you some target weights for some nucs, and I'll show you how much my colonies are weighing as well. So there we go, the bees are looking amazing, if I do say so myself. If you go back to episode 1 in this series and you look at how small that nucleus colony was in the first week of August, it was 2 frames of brood, it was a shake full of bees. If you remember the first time we opened up, they were all clustering in the feeder. There wasn't a single bee outside of the feeder because they didn't know what was going on. You look at that expansion over 8 weeks, that's all that's taken is 8 weeks to take 2 frames of brood, a shake of bees, a mated queen, a A little bit of feed, you turn it into a big, strong overwintered nuc like that. It's taken a bit of work, takes a bit of time to go in to do that trickle feeding, to do the inspections, but it's such a good habit to get into, is to go into winter with a few overwintered nucs as backup, 'cause I do find they overwinter so well that if any of your colonies fail, you've got your overwintered nucs on hand in order to make up your numbers. So there's a few more episodes left in this series. We still need to come back in, take those Apivar strips out. The bees will be clustered up then, so we need to be a little bit careful. We'll do a little bit of weight monitoring as well. We're going to do some apibioxal vaping in December, trying to hit that really low or no brood period. We'll feed a little bit of fondant going into spring as well, and then we'll do a final video showing this colony into the spring. I hope you enjoyed the video though. I hope you're enjoying the series. I hope your overwintered nucs or your nucs for overwinter are coming along really nicely. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.
