Summer Feeding

I don't usually feed my colonies. I'm especially cautious about feeding swarms because they arrive with honey which can contain spores from a variety of diseases including the devastating American Foulbrood. The usual advice is to leave the bees alone for a week. They will build comb and use up the honey which they arrive with.

When I put Colony 17 into their Commercial hive body I had too few full-sized frames. I increased the number by putting in shallow frames from a super. Yesterday I quickly opened the hive to replace the shallow frames with full-sized deep frames.

I don't hold much expectation that Colony 13 will thrive. It is a small colony and vulnerable. It is building comb, but I still don't know whether there is a Queen. I haven't opened the hive. I've only looked at the hive floor, where there were wax platelets.

I had put a feeder on the hive a couple of days ago. My intention was that they should use he feed to build comb and concentrate on growing larger numbers of brood. There isn't much forage around and this is a small colony.

The National Bee Unit issues alerts. I received an alert today (15th June) about starvation. I received one last year on 30th June. It's getting to be a habit.

I've been anticipating a nectar flow from the Lime trees next to my out apiary but it now looks like that won't happen. I visited the hives this evening and it looks pretty certain that the two newly established colonies (Hives F and G) have very low stores.

Everyone seems to feed their bees - even most of the low intervention bee keepers. I'm not convinced.

Bee keepers feed their bees for several reasons: