Trickle Feeding Versus Fondant - Building Colonies for Winter - Which is is the Winner??

Today I'm going to show you the difference between a nuc that's been trickle-fed going into winter versus a nuc that's just been fed fondant. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. I've just got down to this apiary here and I've realized that one of my nucs I left fondant on from pretty much the middle of August. All of the rest of my nucs, I've been trickle-feeding them, Been coming down every week, giving them a little slurp of syrup, seeing how they're getting on, topping up the feeders. And every single time I come down to this apiary, I forget that I haven't got a feeder to go with this nuc. So I've just been putting on fondant, and fondant just doesn't stimulate the colony in the same way that syrup feeding does. So I thought I would take this opportunity just to show you that in this video. Both of these nucs started off exactly the same. Made them up early in August, 2 frames of brood, 2 frames of stores, 2 frames of foundation, good shake of bees, and then one's been fed syrup, trickle fed over the course of about 7 or 8 weeks now, and one has been fed fondant, just plain old standard baker's fondant, and you'll see the difference in these 2 colonies. So let's get inside and I'll show you the difference between the 2 of them. So these are the colonies that I'm going to be showing you today. This is my Abello poly nuc, and I lost the feeder, so I have no way of feeding them syrup. Need to buy myself a new feeder for this nuc. And this is just a BS Honeybees nuc over here that I've been feeding 1:1 sugar syrup. This one here in the middle is my breeder queen that I'm doing a separate video on today as well. I just wanted to talk to you about again the reason that I've not fed this colony here syrup is because I broke the feeder or lost the feeder. And every single time I write it down or I send myself a message And then I forget to bring a replacement feeder along, forget to order the replacement feeder. So the colony's fine, they're doing okay, the weather's been kind to them, but we'll get inside and I'll just show you the difference between these 2 colonies because it's quite dramatic and it's completely down to trickle feeding on one side and no trickle feeding on the other side. So let's get into the colonies and I'll show you what it's all about. So here's my Abello poly hive. As you can see, they completely demolished all the fondant that I gave them. So they're really in desperate need of a feed, but nice strong colony coming up through the feeder hole there. I'll pop that crown board now and I'll show you what the colony looks like underneath. So here we are, got me Apivar strip in there. It's coming up towards the end of September here, and look at the colony. Nowhere near as strong as I would like to see them at this point of the year. 2 frames there where they're covering a lot of bees, There are bees down the rest of it here, but they're not boiling over. I like my colonies boiling over at this point of the year. I'm going to pull out a couple of frames, and I'm going to pull out the outer frames because they're the ones that are really going to show you what's going on in this colony. Is there going to be any brood in the outer frames? Is there going to be lots of stores? I doubt it. We're probably going to see a bit of stores, not much brood, and some empty frames. And really, back end of September, that's not what we should So I'll pull out a couple of frames just to show you what we're getting in the colony that hasn't been trickle fed and has had just a bit of fondant. So first frame, that's the outer frame, absolutely empty. Not a single thing in any of the cells. No brood, no stores, no nectar. It's an empty frame. Not what we want to see. Really not very good at all. So here's a frame straight out of the middle, and really, really nice frame. This is exactly what you want to see across Pretty much all of your frames at this point of the year. Really nice brood pattern, nothing wrong with that queen whatsoever. Nice little ring of pollen over there, and then really good amount of stores. So nothing wrong with this nuc at all, it's just a little bit smaller than I would like to see it. All I'm going to do is I'm just going to replace that empty frame with a frame of stores, because these ones, they really are a little bit light. And obviously today I'm going to give them a really good feed. Start them on the trickle feeding because it's better late than never. And here is the other outer frame as well, and there is a bit of stores on the other side, but for dramatic effect, this frame here and this side of the frame is completely empty. Not what I want to see, so we need to take action on this one, get a bit more feed into them, and we're going to start trickle feeding them. We'll get into the other colony now and I'll show you what a colony should look like once you've been trickle feeding it throughout winter. So not the end of the world with that colony, definitely not as big as the one over here. The lack of trickle feeding has reduced the amount of stores, reduced the amount of brood, and reduced the overall size of the colony. I like my nucs boiling going into winter, massive, bearding at the front, as big as they can possibly be with enough space for the queen to lay. So the fact that there's an empty frame in there and we're taking action towards the back end of September There's no major issue here. It's very, very easily fixed, and I'm going to fix that by giving them a little bit more stores and starting them on trickle feeding now, and then boosting their stores going into winter. So if you're seeing your colonies like that, don't despair. Get them on the trickle feeding. You'll get that one through really, really easily. Let's get onto the colony now that I've trickle fed for the last 7 weeks, and I've been giving them, say, about a litre of 1:1 sugar syrup every single week. So first thing you notice with this colony is It's covering all of the frames. So we've got more bees up that end, and then down here a little bit empty, but it is covering all of the frames. They're going right up to that 6th frame. We're not going to find empty frames here. It's going to be something on every single frame. So let's pull out the same frames again. I pulled out frame 1 over there, frame 3 in the middle, and frame 6, closest one to me. I'll pull out those same frames and I'll give you that comparison of these 2 hives. So there you go, frame 1, they've taken that trickle syrup, they've put it into some stores, they're putting the pollen away as well. Back end of September, what I like to see back end of September is around 4 to 5 frames of brood and then 1 to 2 frames of stores. So out of frames of stores, really not the end of the world. Obviously you don't want like 4 or 5 frames of stores, but this is a healthy sign And this is a sign of a nuc getting ready for winter. Let's take a look at the middle frame and we'll assess that brood. And I'm expecting the middle frame to have a bigger brood pattern than we saw on the nuc that wasn't fed. And there you go, you can see it. It's a completely different brood pattern. You've got brood covering, say, 70 or 80% of the frame. You've got some additional space there. You've got a much Smaller ring of stores, and all that's saying to me is that this colony is bigger than the other one. The other one, there's no issue with it whatsoever, it's just a smaller colony. They're condensing down onto the frame, and on that frame they've got a mixture of brood and stores, whereas in this colony here you've got stores on the outer frames, and then in the middle you've got mostly brood and a little bit of stores. And that's the impact that that trickle feeding is going to give you. It's going to boost the colony size, which in my experience definitely boosts the chances of overwintering well. Let's go and have a look at that final frame on the end, see if we've got any brood on it, and see what the colony is looking like. So no brood on the final frame. This is frame 6 here, but a really nice heavy frame of stores. So this colony here, check 2 excellent frames of stores, good amount of pollen in there as well, and then 4 big frames of brood. This colony is over 6 frames of bees and 4 frames of brood. On the other nuc, it was over 4 frames of bees and about 3 frames of brood. So you could just gauge the difference that trickle feeding's had. It's probably given me about an extra 50% growth. Now you can see with this colony as well, once I've put everything back together again, it's such a bigger colony. Like, it really is so much more lively than the other one. And that's not down to temperament, that's just down to there's loads more bees in here. They're coming out, they're boiling over. This is what I like my nucs looking like going into winter. So there we go. I would say we've got around a 50% increase in the size of the colony where we've trickle-fed for 8 weeks versus the colony where we fed fondant. You might not think that makes that much of a difference or that 50% is that much of a difference, but I think that's a substantial difference for the sake of, say, 6 litres of sugar syrup. It's probably cost me about £3 or £4. And I really do find the stronger that you can get them, the more packed you can get them into those nucs for overwinter, the better success that you'll get. So I think you'll agree, really, really interesting to see the difference between those 2 colonies. Now obviously there's going to be genetic differences between the queens. They're F1, so they're completely dependent on the drones. And then there's climatic conditions as well. So it's been relatively mild in August and September. September in particular has been really, really nice and fair, and the ivy flows come on as well. So that's kept the colonies going and it's boosted them up. I've ensured that the colonies haven't starved, so I've always been there to put the fondant on. But I just wanted to do that video to show you the difference in size between those 2 colonies. To show you the difference in the brood, to show you the difference in the amount of stores that are kept in the frames, and just to encourage you really that if you're producing nucs for yourself, you need to start it early on in the year. Get the nucs nice and strong, trickle feed them, just keep them going every now and again, every 2 or 3 days if you possibly can, absolute minimum every single week, just to give them a little bit of syrup. Even if it's only half a litre of syrup a week, makes a really, really big difference to give that consistent amount of syrup. Over that long period means the queens can lay up really, really good frames of brood, means you get lovely strong nucs going into winter. So I hope you enjoyed that video. I hope you found it useful. 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.