🐝 The Overwintered Nuc System - Episode 9 - Switching Back to 1:1 Syrup and Turbo Charging Growth
In this episode of the “Making Splits for Winter” series, Laurence Edwards explains his practical approach to preparing overwintering nucs. He stresses the importance of timing the transition from fondant to 1:1 sugar syrup in early September, using a trickle‑feeding regimen to stimulate brood rearing without overcrowding. Edwards outlines target brood levels (≈4 frames by early September, ≈5 frames by late September) and the conditions under which to switch to heavy 2:1 syrup feeding. He warns against feeding 2:1 syrup too early, which can starve the queen of laying space and lead to swarming or weak winter bees. The video demonstrates the removal of fondant, inspection of frames, and the setup of a syrup feeder designed to prevent bee drowning. Edwards also mentions his plan to treat the colonies with oxalic acid in December when they are broodless. Throughout, he emphasizes regional adaptation (south coast vs. Scotland) and the need for beekeepers to judge timing based on local weather and colony response rather than fixed calendar dates.
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Episode 9 of the Making Splits for Winter series, and we're moving back to sugar syrup feeding. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. We're on to episode 9 now of the Making Splits for Winter. The nuc is coming on really, really well. They're chomping their way through the fondant, but we're into the first week of September now. I want them to start rearing a really good amount of brood. I want that box completely full, and then as soon as we get that box completely full, we'll backfill with 2:1 sugar syrup. Now it might seem like a little bit strange, and you do need to judge this as to where you are in the country. I can't give you a textbook and say this is how you make splits for winter, and even the splits that I make for winter, I'm not saying that I do it perfectly. All I'm saying is this is how I make my splits for winter. However, you need to judge it Based upon where you are in the country. If you're on the south coast and it's pretty much tropical down there, or if you're in Scotland, you need to judge this differently. All I'm trying to show you with this though is the fact that you've got a finite amount of space in a box, and if you go in too early— a lot of people do this, I see them take off their honey crop middle of August, back end of August, and then go straight in piling in 2:1 sugar syrup, and they just keep on feeding 2:1 sugar syrup. It's really detrimental to a colony if you feed 2:1 sugar syrup in that amount that early on in the year, because you've not given the colony any amount of space in order to rear the winter bees. It's a real balancing act, and what I'm trying to show you in this series here is that you can make the splits, you can make them in July, you can make them in August, but it's not until September, middle of September for me in North Wales, that I want to get the colony filling that box up nicely, Over about 4 frames of brood. And then only at that point when they're starting to move into rearing those winter bees do you want to actually go in with heavy syrup and a lot of heavy syrup. So we'll get into the colony, we'll take a look. What I'm expecting to see though is that brood nest to have naturally expanded, still some empty space on the combs, and we need to get it to a point where there's no longer any empty space on the combs. And that position there is how they're going to overwinter. Now I know that's a lot of talking. I just want to reiterate that it's not a hard and fast rule. Oh, it's the first week of September, so you need to move on to the next step. It just doesn't work like that. You need to time it to get it to a point where the weather turns bad, the bees start rearing their winter bees. That's when you want to go in with heavy sugar syrup. What I'm doing in this video, however, though, is I'm taking out the fondant and I'm going to go back in with 1 to 1 sugar syrup. I'm going to trickle feed it little and often. If you can get in there every day and do this, it's even better. Obviously most people can't do that, so 2 or 3 times a week go in, add a litre, they'll take that down. 2 or 3 days later go back in, another litre of syrup. Just keep on doing that till you get them to a point where they're over, say, 4 or 5 frames of brood, the box is completely full of bees, and you're moving into the middle to the back end of September. Once you get them to that point, then you can feed 2:1, and you can feed lots and lots of 2:1. You can just fill the feeder up, Come back, they'll take it down in a couple of days. Go back, fill that feeder up again. You go wild and you just keep on feeding it until they stop taking it down at that point. Because once you've got them to that point and they're over 4 or 5 frames of brood, they can't take down 6 frames of syrup. And that is the problem that I think a lot of people make when they go to make their splits or they go to feed their colonies over winter, is that you take all the honey off. If you actually look inside the brood nest around that time of year, a lot of the time there's not that much brood there. They might be having a little bit of a brood break. If you take everything away, take all the honey off, and then pump them full of 20 litres of 2:1 syrup, the queen's just got nowhere to lay. And you fast forward a few weeks by the time they've started to work and process that syrup, and it's just all a little bit too late. So I promised I wouldn't talk that much. I do try and stop myself rambling on, but I just wanted to give you a little bit of an insight as to what this series is all about, but also to show you that it's not a case of me putting dates up. And I purposely tried not to put dates up on this series because it's different for everyone. If you're on the south coast or if you're in Scotland, you just need to come up with how the dates work for you. Have a look at the weather, how your colonies are responding to that weather, and just kind of try and come up with your own timescale for getting your splits ready for winter. Right, so I'll get inside the colony and I'll show you how far they've come on in a week, and we'll move them back over to 1:1 sugar syrup feeding. Right, you might notice in the background the colonies are looking a lot smaller now. I've taken all of my honey off all of my colonies. So we are feeding every single nuc, every single hive at the moment, trickle feeding across the board. Let's get into our nuc though, see how the colony's coming on, see what we can do to boost that production and make sure that we don't boost it too much that we're struggling for space. I'm hoping you can see here that it's not massive. What you don't want is you don't want super, super colonies going into the beginning of August, middle of August, because then you've got a bit of a battle on your hands to keep them And to stop them from swarming. It sounds crazy, they will go in August if they're confined in a nuc like this. You're much better off doing it slow and steady, and then when you need to, turbocharging them at the end. And we're well and truly at that point now. These for me are a little bit weak. I want to get these going, and I'm going to get them going by moving that fondant out and getting the 1:1 sugar syrup in there. Still, they're over 5 frames. I've given them a little bit of a heft. And the weight is okay, little bit light maybe as well. I want to get that queen laying some bees as soon as possible because I don't want to get to the end of September and they've not filled the box. So I kind of use that 3-week rule that if I start feeding now, that's going to stimulate the queen to lay some additional eggs. And then in between 3 and 4 weeks, so back end of September, I'm going to see an increase in the amount of brood that's emerging. You can see down there though, the bees are happily working that fondant. But the fondant doesn't give them any sort of stimulation to go quicker. And that's exactly why I use the fondant to do that, because I didn't want them going quicker throughout August because I knew they were going to get too big. Like, don't be fooled, this is a reasonable size nuc. It's not small, it's over 5 frames of bees, probably going to be about 3 frames of brood in there. But going into winter, back end of September, I want them full. I want a full box, completely full, if anything a bit too full. 4 frames, 5 frames of brood, good amount of stores, and that's what I'm going to do to get them to that point now. So first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take out the fondant. They've taken a surprising amount of that fondant, but I'll use that on another colony later on in the year. Just going to shake out the bees. Always double-check there's no queens in there, even though the queen excluder is there. You don't want to get your queen stuck in the fondant. That's completely empty, so I'll put that off to one side. Then I'm going to get inside and I'm just going to show you the status of the colony. Now, if these are your bees, don't go through the frames. There's no benefit to going through the frames at this time of year. I'm doing this to show you the status of them. You know on your own colonies that there's a queen in there. You know there's brood because you would have seen that a few weeks ago. At this point of the year, you just need to see the size of the colony like that. That's all I'm looking for. I'll leave it to your own judgment. You need to balance things as best as you possibly can. And if you think you need to get inside and see how many frames of brood they're on in order to balance it, then get inside and take a look. What I'm aiming for first week of September is 4 frames of brood. I find 4 frames of brood first week of September really good. I'll trickle feed for the next couple of weeks, and then I'm targeting end of September. I want 5 frames of brood, big, strong, heavy nuc, and then I will start with my 2:1 sugar syrup feeding. So believe it or not, that's frame 1. Hardly any stores in there whatsoever. They are light on stores, and this is part of the reason why I'm moving now from a fondant to a syrup feed, because they're a little bit light, and that's why they're not expanding as quick as I would like them to expand. A little bit of fresh nectar coming in as well, but yeah, too light that frame though. So we're definitely switching over to 1:1 sugar syrup to boost the colony and to give them some stores in the frames. Right, next frame, we've got a little bit of liquid stores going in, so some fresh nectar from somewhere. That's nice to see. A little bit of brood, not a massive amount, but then a good amount of empty space. And I know all the way through I've said empty space is good, but getting towards the end of the year you want to see less and less empty space, and that's why we're moving over to syrup now. So next frame, very similar. Got the queen there, she's doing the business. Lots of eggs and larvae. She's moving into expanding this brood nest, but what she's saying is, I can't do it quick enough because there is not enough food coming in. There's no flow. So she's being a little bit frugal with the laying that she's doing. We're going to turbocharge that now by going into the trickle feeding stage. Oh, this is a much, much better frame. This is what you want to see at this time of year. Got some capped stores around the edge, got a little bit of open nectar That they've just brought in there, and then we've got a really nice patch of good amount of brood. If you had 4 or 5 frames like this middle or beginning of September, that's kind of where we want to be. This is a much healthier looking frame, this one. And then we're on to a frame of stores. So we're still only on 3 frames of brood here, and they weren't particularly big frames of brood. This one here though, good to see they've got a relatively nice frame of stores in there. Last thing you want to do this time of the year is let your nucs starve. So though I'm giving you the advice on how to balance things out, obviously always err on the side of not letting your bees starve. So good to see that they've got one nice frame in here. And then the final frame is completely empty, nothing in it whatsoever. Right, so there you go, that's all of the frames. And as you can see, we need to move on to that next phase now. The fondant has done what I want it to do. It's a I've postponed the expansion of this colony. If I'd have gone in 6 weeks ago and started trickle feeding this colony, you'd be on 6 frames of brood already, and there wouldn't be enough space for stores, and I'd have issues. I find this is a much better way of doing it, slowing things down a little bit, and then when you need to, turbocharging the colony by using sugar syrup. So this colony is a little bit too light on stores, always that balancing act there. So for the first round of feeding, I'm going to fill that feeder up, go 100% full, and then I'm going to come back every 3 or 4 days. If the bees are in your own garden, they're looking like this, less is more. If you can do it every 1 or 2 days, just give them a little bit more, a little bit more, they'll keep on bringing that down. And we want to get it to a point where there's a little bit more stores in the colony. We want to get it to a point where the queen's thinking, I can expand now and I can start producing winter bees because I've got that food. Flow coming in. So I'll get some syrup, we'll top it up, and we'll get this colony boosted once again. So here's my 1:1 sugar syrup. I make up 25-liter tubs of it at the moment. In fact, I make up 200-liter tubs and then decant into 25-liter tubs. They're really, really heavy. It's going to fill this colony up though, get it all the way to the top, and they will start taking that down instantly. So like I said before, get some dried wood, stick that in the top of the feeder, You can really drown bees in these pain feeders, so I like to just get extra sticks in there, make sure they don't drown. They'll take that syrup down really quickly then. Right, so there's my nuc all set up and ready to go. They were definitely too low for me in terms of syrup, in terms of stores, so I've topped that right up for the first go. They do not need a second invitation, they are straight in there. That influx is going to give me a little bit of a buffer It's also gonna simulate a flow, and this colony is gonna boom now over the next 3 to 4 weeks. So there we go. I think you'll agree the colony is looking really, really nice now. So that is first week of September. We're gonna get them back on 1:1 sugar syrup. We're gonna build that colony up nice and strong. And once we get them to about 5 frames of brood, middle of September, back end of September, we'll pump 'em full of 2:1 syrup, and then we will leave them alone. We won't do anything with them then until we come back in December and we go for some oxalic acid, so apibioxal sublimation, to try and target them when they're broodless. So I hope you're enjoying the series. 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. Bye.
