Laurence Edwards shows how to feed small nuc colonies with 1:1 sugar syrup in early August to build them up before winter. He pours about a litre into each hive on a rainy day to prevent robbing, adds dry sticks so bees don't drown, and notes the syrup lasts roughly a week.
Episode 5 of the overwintering nuc series, and today we're feeding 1:1 sugar syrup. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. The weather has taken a horrible turn for the worse. It is pouring down. I've got a real gap in the weather and I'm out feeding my nucs. In this video today, I'm just going to top them up Give them some 1:1 sugar syrup. And you might think that's the wrong concentration of sugar syrup to use at this time of year, but it's early August at the moment. You can feed 1:1 sugar syrup all the way through August, and I find it's a really good tip to build up small colonies to get them strong for winter. And then you need to go in and feed 2:1 to give them their winter stores. So I'll get my bee suit on, I'll go and check out the strength of the overwintered nuc, and I'll get them fed up with 1:1 sugar syrup. So I've made myself some 1:1 sugar syrup. Whenever I'm doing just little batches, I always make it in a milk bottle, clean it out, make sure it's really nice and clean, put some boiling water in it, give it a good swirl around, get it very, very clean. And then all you need to do— I go really, really crude. It doesn't matter when you're doing it at this stage of the year. I just fill it up about halfway with sugar, simple white granulated sugar, and I fill it up with boiling water and I shake it until it's clear, leave it to cool, and you end up with a Roughly 1 to 1 sugar syrup. If it's a little bit light, if it's a little bit heavy, doesn't matter. I really don't go to the effort of measuring it out. It's just too much work and the bees do not care. Just a word of caution though, when you're feeding small splits like this, it's rainy today, it's windy, it's a really, really good day to feed. It's a good day to get out and do some stuff on your bees that you wouldn't normally do, and feeding is one of them because A, the colony is not going to be able to get out to feed itself, So if it's running low on stores, they need a feed anyway. But then the fact that it's raining, you've not got wasps flying, you've not got other bees flying, the chances of robbing are much less. And then also, if you do spill a tiny little bit of syrup, the rain will hopefully wash it away. But my word of caution to you is do not spill a single drop of syrup. Little splits like this, they can be robbed out by wasps in a matter of hours. When you're feeding them, do Do it on a rainy day, don't give them too much, make sure they're strong enough to take it over, say, 3 or 4 frames of bees, and do not spill any sugar syrup anywhere. And make sure that the hive is completely sealed up so no wasps can get in anywhere. Follow those tips and you'll be fine. Let's get inside the colony, give them a little sip of some 1:1 sugar syrup. So here's my colony of bees. Not going to have seen any expansion because we only released the queen about a week ago. 2 or 3 weeks away before we see some good numbers in terms of an expansion. What we're going to do is we're just going to chuck some sugar syrup down there. If you can see down there, I've got my wooden float down there already, and then the bees will use that to feed. But you can see there, a few more bees coming up now. It's probably extending to about 4 frames of bees, slight cluster position, which shows how cold it is here today. Let's get the sugar syrup in though, and I'll show you how well the bees start taking So all I'm going to do is I'm just going to carefully pour that down there, making sure not to spill any sugar syrup outside the hive. Couple of splashes inside the hive, not the end of the world. Don't spill it outside of the hive, it will cause you all sorts of issues. So you can see there, gone for about a litre of sugar syrup. You really don't need to go wild here. A litre will see them over for the next week, and then you can add more if required. You can see the bees immediately going onto that sugar syrup. They do not need an invitation to get involved in that. They will clean up any mess on the inside of the hive. Do not, I repeat, do not get any sugar syrup on the outside of that hive. It really does cause you issues. Now, sometimes in the Payne's poly nucs, you can get bees drowning in that feeder. I've got a single piece of stick in there, but I find if you put like 3 or 4 little kind of broken bits of stick about the same length as the feeder, nice dry deadwood floats to the top, just gives them really easy access without drowning. So there you go, it's as simple as that. We've successfully fed them 1:1 sugar syrup. I'll close the bees back up now, let them get on with their feeding. So that's it for the video. The colony has got everything it needs now. It's got a queen, it's got brood in all stages, it's got very rainy windy weather which it could do without, but it's got some 1:1 sugar syrup that the bees will use to feed themselves while it's raining, but it will also simulate a flow which will help that colony of expand and get really, really strong. Don't miss next week's episode, episode 6. We're going to be going straight in with Apivar, which is our mite treatment of choice for this year. Going to get the mite treatment in nice and early, so don't miss out on that one. As always though, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.
