When Is It Too Late To Feed Your Bees For Winter?

In this video, I'm going to tell you what to do if you've not fed your bees up well for winter and you're coming in at the back end of November, early December, and the bees aren't up to weight. So first thing to say here is don't feel bad if that's the situation. Don't let anybody tell you that you've done anything wrong or that you should have done this. Beekeeping is all about learning from your own mistakes, and if you get to November and you get to December and you find a colony that's dangerously light, then The simple answer is you feed them and you take positive from the fact that you checked them before they died. Of course, you want to get your colonies up to weight for winter, and really when you get used to it, you get a feel for it, you get your colonies up to weight and you don't really need to be going and hefting them too much in kind of like November and December. But it doesn't matter whether you've got hundreds of nucs or one colony in your back garden, you don't want them to starve. So if that means going out and hefting them because you think maybe it's been unseasonably warm or you think that they've been predated by wasps at the back end of the year, like I go and check my colonies, I go and heft them, I go and make sure that they're okay once every month maybe throughout November, December, and January. And then as we ramp up into February, March, and April, that's when the real fun starts and that's when the stores can deplete very, very quickly. But if you're in this situation, November, December, and you find that your colonies are very, very light, then there's 2 really simple methods that are going to fix that colony and get them through the winter. Now it all comes down to temperature, so the bees in poly hives I find will still take down liquid feed as long as it's either invert sugar syrup or very heavy 2:1 sugar syrup. I would go with invert at this time of the year though, just to eliminate any risk of it going mouldy. But if they're in a poly hive and they've got access to a good feeder, either a frame feeder or poly Ashworth feeder, anything up to around like 11 or 12 degrees Celsius, The bees will go in and still take that liquid feed, and it doesn't matter how late in the year that you do that. They will take the feed; they'll put it into the cells, and they don't need to cap it over because it's such a high sugar content that it's not going to go off and it's not going to ferment. So temperature dependent, you can get in there, go and feed your bees with invert sugar syrup as long as they're in a poly hive. Now, if they're not in a poly hive, I would just kind of adjust that temperature to maybe like 13 or 14 degrees, and choose a suitable day to feed. Feed them. Don't go and feed them when it's six or seven degrees outside and forecast to be going down to freezing for the next three or four weeks. But if you see a little window where it's between, let's say, twelve to fourteen degrees, give them a little bit of syrup. Don't go and give them ten liters of syrup at this point in the year, but maybe give them a liter of syrup. See how they get on. If they take that liter of syrup down, just keep on continuing to do that, and they will just take that syrup down, and they will use that as their overwintering. Now you might get to a point where that's absolutely fine and you get your bees up to weight by doing that late season feed. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. You've hefted your bees, you've identified a problem, you've realized that they're light, you've fed them, you've got them up to weight, and your bees get through the winter. All is good, you've done a good job. However, if your bees aren't in polyhives or the temperature doesn't work, then all you need to do is just switch over to some emergency feeding using a really simple either proprietary bee fondant, or even better than that, just go with the cheapest Beco fondant that you can possibly get. That is made of just sugar, water, and glucose. You'll see it comes in 12.5 kilogram packs. It's called baker's fondant, and it only has those 3 ingredients. Now you can feed this to bees in a number of ways, but I find if the bees are starving, they will move further to get it as long as the temperature allows. So you can put it into like a frame feeder if you want. I don't like frame feeders with fondant because it just ends up becoming a sticky mess and kills a lot of bees. And then it's a nightmare to clean out in the spring. My preferred method of feeding a big amount of fondant is just to take the crown board off completely and just to put a big slab directly on the top of the frames and then to insulate around it, put the crown board back on, and make sure you're well insulated at the top. Now, if you want to, I don't find you need to do this, but some people have issues with this. If you want to, you can put a queen excluder in between the fondant and the frames to stop it dripping through. But if your colonies are big and strong enough, I find that anything that drips through, they just clean it up. It warms it up for them. It kind of makes their lives like a little bit easier if it starts dripping through. They haven't got to go up to the top and get it. So just to recap that again, so you make sure you're doing it right, you take the crown board off and you've got like a brood box full of bees, put a queen excluder on the top, and then place a big slab of fondant. Like if they're dangerously light, you can still go at this point of the year, maybe back end of November, early December, with like a 6.5 kilogram slab. Big slab, you don't need to roll it out, just place it directly on top. And then you're gonna need some sort of makeshift eke. The perfect makeshift eke, which everybody will have, is just an empty super. And then what I like to do is make sure that I've got a couple of inches of clearance between the top of the fondant and the top of the super, and then I'll just cut a piece of Sellotex to fit. And then you can just put your crown board back on and you can put your roof back on. That is like a really, really good system. The bees won't have any issues in terms of getting up to that fondant, perfect access. They can access it from any area and you're not losing all that heat upwards and giving them like a really awkward space to heat throughout the winter. Now for me, I would just leave them at that point. Giving a colony, even on like the brink of starvation at this point in the year, 6 kg of fondant, that should be enough to get them through the year. But obviously I'd come back and just double-check maybe in like 6 or 8 weeks, see if they've taken it all down. If they've taken it all down, just repeat that process again. Give them another 6 kilograms. You can't overfeed them at this point in the year when you're giving them an emergency feed like fondant. If there's too much in there, they just won't take it down. It's not like syrup where they'll just take it down and clog out the brood nest. With fondant, you can feed as much as you like. You can't overdo it. So that's 2 methods for you, but there is a 3rd method. And the 3rd method is for a colony that's not like super, super light, but you're hefting it and thinking, I think that might be a little bit light. I would suggest in that instance feeding fondant above a crown board. So you have a crown board on your colony, central hole in the middle, take a takeaway container, fill it up with fondant, plop that over the crown board hole in the centre, and then you can just put your roof back on. And in a similar fashion, if you need like a makeshift eke, just use an empty super. You don't need to insulate too much in that point because you've got the crown board in situ. That's a really nice low interaction method with the bees where they're not even really going to notice that you're there. So there we go, 3 methods for feeding your bees if you find them light in November or December. Don't feel bad about it, feel proud that you found out that there was something wrong, and make sure you fix it.