Guilfordbeekeepers.org

I'm from Greensboro and this is my first season with bees. I've noticed my bees are coming back to the hive with much less nector than before. Is it time to start feeding them sugar water again? If so, will 1/1 ratio work for now. Or, do you recommend going to 2/1 ratio? Also, the new top feeder I purchased this spring has quite a bit of black mold along the sides. Do you know of a way to clean it? Do the bees really care if there is mold? Will hydrogen peroxide help with cleaning off the mold growth? Any other suggestion would be most appreciated.
Thanks,
dmiller

I would check the hive weight/amount of stored honey or sugar water "honey" before I started feeding. If the hive is very light or they have almost no honey and nectar, I would start feeding. The 1:1 mix would be fine for now, 2:1 for a little later when you are feeding to provide winter stores.

When I have mold on the side of a feeder, I dilute some bleach with water and wipe the feeder with a moist rag. It does not get rid of all of the mold, but it makes me feel better and the bees don't seem to mind. I do give the feeder a day or so to air out before using it.

And now, a request for you--please put your location in your profile. When you post in the future, we may not remember your location, and speaker after speaker at the recent NCSBA meeting repeated that "all beekeeping is local" so that local conditions will often determine a course of action.

Ok, I placed about 1 1/2 gallons of 1 to 1 sugar water on the hive and it was gone in 24 hours. Looks like they are thirsty indeed. Is this typical for this time of year? I have 4 medium 8 frame supers.

dmiller

I'm not surprised. There is not much nectar available and a strong hive with lots of brood to feed and lots of adult bees to feed can consume a lot of sugar water. I went through a healthy hive with a beekeeper this morning. As we looked at his honey super, I saw bees in it but no nectar. I told him it was likely the bees were removing stored honey and using it for the brood and for themselves. If they were adding to the stores, I would have seen nectar in the open cells around the capped honey.

The brood areas were active and healthy, but there was no honey and no nectar in any of the brood frames where you would expect to see it, and that confirmed my suspicions. I told him to keep a close watch and be prepared to start feeding. They were not in immediate danger of starving, but if he looked in a few days and saw even less stored honey up top, he would want to start feeding. We are likely to be in an extended period of dearth and heavy feeding may become necessary to keep a hive from starving and to allow it to put up a supply of sugar water "honey" for winter stores.

Thanks for confirmation. I have heard some say go ahead and start 2 to 1 sugar to water and the bees will start capping the honey. What are your thoughts?

dmiller

You can switch over if you want. If the bees need it to eat/feed to larvae, they can add water. We are getting close enough to August/September that you can be aiming for winter food supplies as well as brood food.

OK, thanks. Do you know of a less expensive place to buy sugar than Costco?

dmiller

The 50lb bag at Costco is usually the cheapest. On rare occasions, WalMart has had their 10lb bag at a cheaper price/pound than Costco's best price, but not often. I try and keep an eye on the Costco price when I am there (not too often) and judge grocery store specials from that. I used this past year's Amex/Costco cash back coupon to buy a supply of sugar. It's less painful than laying out cash.