Spring Feeding Honey Bees

Tools you need to determine when to start feeding honey bees, when not to feed, and how to avoid the mistakes of the past.

You need to know your weather patterns, and growing zone.

Below is my ‘bee calendar’ where I put in thing that I did each year, and whether they worked. What I want to improve next year, and new things I want to try.

Spring Feeding the Honey Bees

This is a very controversial and hotly debated topic. Spring in our area is March 20. The flow starts around mid May. If you want maximum bees in the hive, then you should start feeding pollen 6 weeks before the flow starts. In our area that means we start feeding pollen the last week in March.

NOTE: We will not hyper feed a weak hive at this time as there are not enough bees to keep the brood warm, and you can end up with a mess. There is nothing worse than a frame of dead, older larva that the bees will not readily eat.

Note: You cannot develop a successful, honeybee feeding schedule without understanding the nutritional needs of the honey bee, Apis mellifera.

We will feed pollen to a hive earlier that is going strong, so that they do not cannibalize the larva. If the queen is going to lay, then we help her. We cannot stop her because we fear a cold snap.

In Our area the weather goes above 10C the first two weeks of April but drops for 7 – 10 days near the end of April. This cold spell must be taken into account when feeding.

That said, remember that our Buckfast Honeybees are doing cleansing flights for most of the winter. There is only a short time, end of January to end of February, where there are only 4 – 5 days over zero. And, our bees will fly when the temperature is above zero.

NOTE: While Dandelions are considered a boon for honey bees, they have very little nutritional value, and very little aminio acid content.

Note: One of the best sources of early pollen, and possibly nectar, is the maple tree.

Pollinator supportive trees and shrubs for farm and orchard windbreaks – Beekeeping & Pollinators

Honey Bee Feeding Facts (as we have been taught, and understand them):

No Pollen – No Larva.
It will take 30 days for the first larva to become foragers.
If spring flow starts Mid May, then first foragers need to be born Mid March.
Do Not feed sugar water if it is below 10C (some say 14C) at night to prevent fermentation. That said, it is better to feed than have a hive starve to death, but we prefer to feed fondant.
Only use ‘in hive’ feeding of sugar water in the spring. The sugar water needs to stay warm.
Thin sugar water can start the queen laying, or start bees drawing comb.
Packages and Nucs may not have enough foragers to effectively supply pollen and nectar to the hive.
Do not feed sugar water when the bees are bringing in nectar and you want to sell the honey. You do not want to be selling ‘sugar honey’. If you do feed sugar water, save this honey to feed back to your bees in a dearth or next winter.
Document your success and failures. This is the only way to develope a pro-active beekeeping method, and prevent repeating the same mistakes each year.

Here is an excellent resource: Click to Read More: GuideFeedingBees.pdf

When To Feed Honey Bees Sugar Water

Step #2

The Proactive Beekeeper

Learn about bee nutrition.

Develop Your Own Bee Calendar

Your bees may be in a colder area. You may have more snow on the ground. Where we get rain from the end of February, you may still be experiencing biting cold and deep snow. Instead of following my calendar, I suggest that you make your own calendar. It is not hard.

Find a pollen map for your area. Ours states that the pollen starts the first week in March.
locate the growing zone for your area. Depending on the map, we are either in zone 7b or 6a.
Google your area for planting days, outdoors
1. https://www.almanac.com/gardening/planting-calendar/
Google historical weather. This will tell you when the queen will start to lay, and what cold snaps, if any, you can expect after that date.

A Word About Sugar Water

@Michael Bush ‘s The Practical Beekeeper, page 100: Many of the honeybee’s enemies, such as nosema, chalkbrood, EFB, and varroa all thrive and reproduce better at the pH of sugar syrup and don’t reproduce well at the pH of honey. This, however, seems to be universally ignored in the beekeeping world. The prevailing theory on how oxalic acid trickling works is that the bee’s hemolymph becomes too acidic. for the varroa and they die, while the bees do not. So how is it helpful to feed the bees something that has a pH in the range that most of their enemies, including Nosema, thrive, rather than leave them honey that is in the pH range where most of their enemies fail?

Many beekeepers counter this, and reduce mold, by adding a little apple cider vinegar to their sugar water. This changes the PH.

That said, many beekeepers do not add anything. We feed using freezer bags, which provides no more than three days of feed. This is time consuming, but we have seen good results.

In Hive Sugar Water Feeders

If you are using the ziplock bag method make sure you have the ‘double zip’ large freezer bags. Fill them, remove the air, and lay them on a counter. Carefully go over the zipper again and you will be shocked how many times you haven’t sealed the zipper tight. Then, when I put a bag in a hive, I put the zipper to the outside edge of the hive (left or right, past the 10th frame). This way, if it leaks, the flow will go down the outside of the hive.

In Hive Pollen Feeders

We use to use paper, and parchment paper, and wax paper. Now we drop a handful of pollen on the top frames, over the brood. It is very important it is over the brood as the nurse bees do not travel more than a couple inches from the brood.

Pollen Patties and Pollen Substitutes

Irradiated pollen has many of the microbials destroyed.
Dried pollen has lower nutritional value
Pollen substitute is less likely to transfer viruses, bacteria, and spores
Mixing pollen substitute with water produces a dry, hard patty. Mixing pollen substitute with oil produces a patty that stays moist.
Pollen is needed to produce royal jelly
Pollen alone does not provide all the amino acids, protein, lipids and microbials for good bee gut health.

Above is a picture of a commercial pollen patty, and our method of feeding early sugar water, and hive alive supplement.

Click To Download: Spring Feeding PDF

Click the above link to download our ‘cheat sheet.’ This will give you an ide of what we do and when. We added the Winter Feeding, and Spring Feeding blog posts to help you understand ‘why’.

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