Beef feeding in February. How to feed bees in winter and early spring: tips of experienced beekeepers

The results of the spring honey harvest depend on how the bees overwinter. The more bees are in the spring, the more fruitful they will work, giving a good collection. Therefore, it is very important to properly prepare families for wintering.

How to prepare bees for winter

Care of bees consists in constant supervision over families and in creation of comfortable conditions for their existence. So, the beekeeper should prepare the nests throughout the summer for the winter period. Final inspection is carried out in autumn.

During this audit, the beekeeper must establish and record the following data in the log:

• Age of the uterus;
• Number of brood;
• Stocks of perga and honey, their approximate amount;
• The general condition of the bees and the assessment of the readiness of families for the subject to wintering.

After an autumn check, the beekeeper corrects the deficiencies identified. From this stage begins winter feeding of bees and preparation for frost.

Stages of preparation for winter

1. Procurement of high-quality feed.
2. Strengthening the power of the family.
3. Assembling the socket.
4. Treatment of bees.
5. Sanitary cleaning of the nest.
6. Creating conditions for keeping bees in conditions of severe cold and frost.

A very important stage is feeding.

Why feed bees

Winter time is conditionally divided into two periods. The first period can be called a deafness. So, in the beginning of winter bees are in complete rest. They move little and practically do not eat food. This period is the most economic and quiet for the whole year. In this mode, the family lives before the appearance of brood. From this moment the second period of wintering begins.

The appearance of brood completely changes the situation in the hive. Bees begin to activate and engage in feeding the brood. This means that the feed consumption increases. In addition, bees spend efforts to create a certain temperature and humidity in the brooding zone. And they expend energy on this. Ideal is the situation when the moment of growing bees comes closer to the spring. The matter is that bees in the spring have more opportunities and forces for feeding brood than in winter.

As a rule, bees grow their brood at the end of February or in March, although there are often exceptions. Therefore, feeding bees in February can be important for the development of brood.

When to feed up

Since closer to the end of winter, families consume more food, it is important for the beekeeper to determine when to feed.

Many experienced beekeepers argue on this topic. Some argue that you can not touch the nests until the very spring. And others defend the opinion about the need to give additional food, otherwise the bees will die. The fact is that bees on the instinctive level still in the fall stockpile large stocks of honey. If it is not completely taken away, the bees will survive all winter. The chance that they will die, exists only if you take all the honey before wintering, without even leaving food. The honey consumption in winter is about 1 kg per month. This means that for October, November, December and January the family eat about 4 kg of honey. According to these calculations, the beekeeper can approximately calculate how much honey should be left for the families to survive the winter.

Many beekeepers, fearing the death of insects, spend winter top dressing. Experts say that it is better not to do this. Feeding in winter can play a cruel joke and cause premature scarring of the uterus. Therefore, it is not recommended to feed in winter. It is better to provide bees with all the feeds in the fall. In this case, you need to carefully calculate the amount of complementary foods, so that it is enough even for spring development.

Early feeding of bees is carried out after the inspection of the hive. If there are no more stocks, you can give bees honey diluted with water, or prepare a feeder.

Feed or feed

The main difference between bees is that they are able to feed themselves and even share with people. Therefore, only the beekeepers can feed the family, who choose all the honey from the hive. It is for this category of beekeepers that feeding bees with sugar syrup is the main way to support families during wintering. So they create stocks of sugar honey.

Such carbohydrate feed will help bees to winter well and even survive several seasons. But because of the lack of minerals, vitamins and many other useful substances, insects will weaken and degenerate. Some beekeepers are feeding the family with syrup even in the summer. In this case honey will be with other properties. Very little will be useful in it. Therefore, the feeding of bees with syrup should be applied only in the event of a shortage of winter stocks.

Thus, this type of fertilizing should be carried out only in two cases:

1. When a family can not provide enough feed.
2. If the collected honey crystallizes or contains a padi. Such honey is unsuitable as a winter food.

How to spend winter top dressing

There are times when even proper care of bees and large supplies of food do not save the family from winter starvation. The only way out is to feed insects. As one of the options you can use a low-copper framework, in which you should add sugar syrup with honey. If it is good to fill all the honeycombs of one such frame, up to 2 kg of feed comes up, which should be enough for the family for a month. The frame should be put, removing the empty honeycomb, cover with a diaphragm and another warmth cushion. There are other ways of fertilizing. Let us dwell on them in more detail.

Candy Recipe

Candy is a sugar-honey dough, which is often used when feeding bees. Recipes of this bee meal in different sources may differ. But the essence of this does not change. Usually it is prepared according to this scheme: 1.9 kg of liquid honey warmed in a water bath to 50 ° C, add 8 kg of powdered sugar, 100 g of water. Knead as a regular dough, and make cakes.

Honey-sugar cakes are placed on top of the frame.

Honey feeding

Honey feeding honey bees is widely used in both autumn and spring. To do this, the hive is taken out of excess frames, printed out and substituted for strong and medium-sized families. A frame with honey should be placed in the hive from the edge, behind the diaphragm or the second from the edge.

If the honey in the honeycomb crystallized, such honeycombs are opened and poured into it a little warm water. Very soon, honey will become liquefied, and bees will be able to start feeding.

There are situations when honey is sour. Then in no case can it be boiled and given to bees as complementary foods. The fact is that when the fruit sugar boils, its caramelization takes place. Such honey is very dangerous for bees.

Also, in the wintering bee family, the unsealing honey can be liquefied. The framework with such honey should be transferred to strong families. If this is not done, then at a temperature of more than 10 ° C, ideal conditions are created to activate different yeasts that are in the air and honey. As a result, fermentation or souring of honey can occur.

If the stored food is not enough, it is recommended to give warmed in a warm room a frame with quality sealed honey. Alternatively, centrifugal honey can be used. To make it, you need to put honey in enamel or aluminum utensils , adding a glass of water for each kilogram. The pan is put on a cauldron with water, heated to a boil and gradually stir the honey until all the crystals dissolve. Then the mass is removed from the fire and poured into the feeder.

The mediated honey should also be prepared. Before serving, it must be preheated to dissolve all the crystals. To accelerate the dissolution process for each kilogram of honey add a glass of boiling water and mix well. Then the honey is left overnight to completely dissolve. The next day it can be served to the bees in a warm state.

Honey feeding methods

Feeding honey can be carried out in the following ways:

1. With the help of feeders, special devices for feed. Before use, the feeder should be thoroughly washed and dried. Only after this can be poured along the slots wax with ash ash or with rosin.
2. From jars - in this case, use ordinary glass jars, which pour liquid lure (for example, sugar syrup).
3. By filling the cells.

Protein feed

Nutrition of bees should consist not only of honey and sugar. Great importance for the development and life of the bee family is protein food. This source is pollen. This should be taken into account when it is planned to fertilize bees. In February, the lack of protein food is particularly acute. As a rule, closer to spring, the stocks of perga are already running out.

The lack of pollen negatively affects the number and quality of the offspring. As a result, small bees with weak musculature and a shorter life span are excreted . In addition, pollen is an important component for the separation of bees wax. Therefore, protein feeding of bees in the spring is very important, and in some cases even necessary.

It is proved that the addition of pollen to the feed before the 11th day of the life of the bee helps to increase the waxing glands. After this period the pollen no longer has such an effect.

But using this kind of complementary food, beekeepers must adhere to the important rule: you can not mix protein and carbohydrate food. The fact is that there are two groups of bees living in the hive - young wet-nurses and summer bees, who feed exclusively on honey. Therefore, the excess sugar for the first group or the excessive amount of pollen for the second group will not correspond to their normal diet. To satisfy the requirements of all bees, two types of feed should be given separately.

Preparation of feeds for Stepanenko

Among the owners of the beehives, Russian beekeeper Stepanenko Gennady is highly respected. He developed a whole system of preparing hives for wintering. So, the beekeeper Stepanenko prepares food for the winter from the spring. After flowering sainfoin and acacia, he selects from the nests of 8 frames, which should contain at least 1 kg of sealed honey. This framework is placed by the beekeeper on the eastern side of the hives.

Stepanenko explains this by saying that the next honey will be given to bees from sunflowers. Such honey quickly crystallizes. The beekeeper places frames with this honey in the bottom of the beehive, so that the bees during wintering eat it in the first half of winter. And in the second half they will eat esparce honey. If you leave the families with enough honey, then the feeding of bees in February may not be necessary.

Feeding Stepanenko spends after the last pumping of honey, but not later than mid-September. According to Gennady, the feeding of bees in February should be carried out only with the goal of preventing rot fungus and better development of families. To do this, he prepares cakes from a therapeutic and preventive paste, the weight of which does not exceed 1 kg, and places them on top of the nest. For the whole spring, families should receive three such cakes.