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When nectar is in short supply or unavailable, bees draw on the honey stores in their hive.
You need to frequently monitor the amount of stored honey during these times (especially winter) because when it has all gone the colony will starve.
We feed bees sugar water to supplement if there is a shortage of honey to prevent starvation in the hive.
It can also help stimulate and help promote breeding within the hive.
Feeder sugar water may also be very useful for increasing and boosting the number of field bees foraging for pollen.
Starvation can be prevented by:
– Moving bees to an area where plants are yielding nectar
– Feeding them syrup made with white sugar.
Bee colonies can be kept alive for long periods by feeding sugar water.
This feeder is designed to sit in the entrance of your hive to feed sugar water.
Making sugar water:
*It is important to understand that WHITE SUGAR is to be used only*
(Other sugars containing molasses is bad for the bees. Molasses is toxic to bees.)
You will need:
– White sugar
– Water
– Bottle (Any 600ml bottle fits this feeder e.g empty water bottle)
– Feeder
Make enough for immediate use only.
(Any extra that is not used will ferment and create bacteria that is not good for the bees. If it tastes sour, do not feed to your bees. Clean container throughly.)
Mix 1:1 (1kg:1 Litre).
Take 1kg of white sugar and pour it into 1 litre of warm/hot water.
Mix the sugar until it has disolved and mixed well.
Wait for the water to then cool down.
Once cooled, pour into your bottle that is going onto your feeder.
Connect feeder to the bottle.
Place feeder onto the entrance of the hive you are feeding.
Check in on your feeder every 12-24 hours to see if they are using the sugar water or not.
Depending on the situation of how hungry the bees are you may need to check your feeder more frequently.
If the feeder is empty and there is no proof showing that they are storing the sugar, you may need to give them another feed.
It is up to you as the beekeeper to monitor the honey flow coming in and to decide if they are still hungry or not.
Bees don’t differentiate between food sources and they will cap sugar water instead of nectar.
Bees cannot make honey with a sugar water mix. If you harvest capped syrup, you won’t be harvesting pure honey.
This will ferment is will become unusable.
Do not feed your hives honey.
It is illegal to feed bees honey. Or any wildlife.
Never place honey in the open or outside the hive.
This is why we feed sugar water instead.
