Feeding and Overwintering Descriptive Transcript

Summary: Paul Kelly, research and apiary manager, and David Stotesbury, research and apiary assistant, show how to feed and overwinter honeybees. 

00:00 - 00:26
[The video opens with footage of many bees flying around hives in a bee yard. The text “Feeding Bees and Overwintering” fades in. The video transitions to a montage of seven shots showcasing honey bees and different elements of the research centre, ending with footage of a bee taking off from a yellow flower as the logo for the Honey Bee Research Centre fades in.]

00:32 - 01:01
[Cut to a medium shot of Paul Kelly standing in the bee yard surrounded by hives.]

Paul Kelly: Hi everyone. We are going to talk about feeding now. In this part of the world what we do is feed our bees in the fall and typically not again in the spring, so we'll sort of focus on just fall feeding like that and when we are feeding in the fall we are trying to get a large amount of feed in as quickly as possible so there is a pretty narrow window in the fall after we've harvested the honey to get the feed in before the weather gets cold.

01:01 - 01:57
Paul: We want to feed the bees when all the field bees, the summer bees are still alive, when there's a large population of bees that are able to take that syrup down, ripen it, they invert the sugar the sucrose into glucose and fructose, so that takes them a bit of time and energy and we want to use those summer bees to do that job. So for right around here we're feeding in the latter part of September that's an ideal time, we get the honey off right after the golden rod flow is finished and then feed immediately. We try to feed about four imperial gallons per colony, so that's quite a large amount of syrup and that's two to one sugar syrup. If you are not able to make up two to one sugar syrup it's not a big deal, just make it up as thick as you can and feed them proportionally the similar amount. So we'll talk over the different methods now.

01:58 - 02:35
Paul: The one method I'll mention is a frame feeder. [Paul picks up a black frame feeder.] So this feeder replaces a frame and you put that in place at the outside frame here [Paul refers to an open hive on the ground.] you pull that frame out and insert this feeder there. Some people put straw or chicken wire in here [refers to the inside of the feeder frame] to help the bees not drown inside there, but you can only put about a gallon in there, so you would need to fill it four times to get them through the fall. So that's not my preference. Works pretty good for spring feeding if you are wanting to be doing that. So that's the frame feeder.

02:35 - 03:41
Paul: Next method we are going to mention is the pail feeder. [Paul picks up an inner cover with a round hole in the centre.] This is a pretty commonly used method. For that you need an inner cover with a hole in it and you put that inner cover on [Paul places the inner cover on the open hive.] and then you fill up your pale full of sugar syrup, this is empty right now, but you would turn it over and it doesn't actually run out, just a little bit runs out and then it's it's held in by vacuum pressure, so we turn that over and you place it over top of that hole. [Paul turns the pail upside down and lines up the hole on the lid with the hole on the inner cover.] We just have a little look here, this one has a screen on it, [refers to the hole on the pail lid] this is a commercially made pale feeder, but some people just drill a bunch of small holes in a lid and that works pretty well too, so we'll put that over this way the bees can get up and get at that and then just to protect that we put an empty box around it and then a hive lid goes on top of that. So now we're done, that feeding is done.

03:41 - 04:06
[Paul dismantles his pail feeder setup.]

Paul: This method works pretty well but it's rather slow, so it's also not my favourite method. We'll go on to one more method here before we talk about my all-time favourite method, which is called barrel feeding. So the next method we've got here is a hive top feeder.

04:06 - 04:58
[Paul holds a wooden box towards the camera so the inside is visible.]

Paul: This is a wooden box with a slot built into the middle so the bees can come up through that into these two tanks here, so we set that on the hive like so [Paul sets the box on top of the open hive.] and this will hold four gallons so it will hold a lot of syrup and we can fill it up all at once and that's going to be enough for the bees to winter on. So we just pour our syrup in [Paul grabs a white pail filled with syrup. He pours equal amounts of syrup into the two sections of the feeder.] and I like to dribble just a little bit of syrup down that slot there just to get them going, coming up to look for that syrup, but a lot of bees would drown in there and some hive top feeders have covers and floats and so on I prefer to just use straw. [Paul grabs handfuls of straw and places equal amounts on top of the syrup.]

04:59 - 05:47
Paul: The straw gives them a nice float to climb on and they can come right up through this slot, get out onto the straw, get moving around and they'll take that syrup down in a matter of you know a week, four or five days a week somewhere something like that all depending on how warm the temperatures are, the warmer it is, the faster they can take it down. Once they take it down they have to ripen it as I've mentioned so warm temperatures help them evaporate that. If they don't get it evaporated properly it will ferment in the comb and that causes sickness of course we would then cover that up [Paul places a wooden inner cover on top of the hive.] and come back in a week or so and take that hive top feeder off.

05:47 - 06:34
Paul: The last method I want to talk about is barrel feeding and that's what we actually do here for the most part. We take a forty-gallon barrel or sorry a forty five gallon barrel, we fill it with forty gallons so that leaves a little bit of space at the top, [Visuals cut to footage of barrels with many bees flying around them.] we put loose straw on the top there and then we prop the lid up a little bit with a stick running under the lid, put some bricks on there so it doesn't blow out the lid doesn't blow off and that lid keeps the rain from getting in and causing the honey to ferment, but the bees will come and find that and sometimes we need an excluder there or something to give a bit of scent to it to attract them to the barrels and very quickly they find where that is, they come back and they do round dances tell all the other bees to get out and get looking [Visuals cut back to Paul speaking in the bee yard.] and it gets to be a real frenzy.

06:35 - 06:55
Paul: They can take that syrup down in three days so we are feeding a hundred hives in this location, we'll set up ten barrels, we put one forty-gallon barrel out for every ten colonies and that's down in three days, it's amazing how quickly they can move that syrup and get it into position in their hive.

06:56 - 07:31
Paul: Some people might think that's maybe not a good idea it might encourage robbing, I totally disagree with that it actually prevents robbing because the bees get all the food they need very quickly and they are not interested in robbing after that, they're not interested in checking each other out for food or even it does prevent them from robbing at our honey house as well, so they are way less of a nuisance if we get them barrel fed and they are done. It's like they just can’t get up one more time to go to the buffet table, they are done and so it's a really good method for feeding bees.

07:31 - 07:45
Paul: So there you go there's a few methods about feeding bees and you have to choose what works for you, but all of them will work fine just play around a little bit and see what works for you. Thanks for watching. [Video cuts to black screen with white text: “Preparing Colonies for Winter.”]

07:50 - 08:23
[Cut to David Stotesbury speaking in the bee yard among hives. He is holding an entrance reducer.]

David: So today we are just going to finish up with overwintering your colonies and how to prepare them for the winter. So we've already talked about any sort of medication and disease control you're going to have to do in the fall and also feeding your bees. So we are going to pretend this hive is a well-fed treated hive ready to go into winter, we are also going to pretend it's not a 32 degree July day so right now we are talking late October early November. So our bees are kind of shut down for the year, it's getting pretty darn cold and we are ready to shut her down for the year.

08:23 - 09:25
David: So all our hives are down to just single brood chambers now or double brood chambers, just lid, inner cover and again the brood chamber and the bees, so that's what we've gotten things down to. With the first little bit of equipment we used during the winter is what's called an entrance reducer or a mouse guard and that just simply goes in the entrance to exactly do what it sounds like it should do reduce the entrance, but it also what it does is protect the bees from having mice hop in from the outside and into the colonies, so this will just slide on in we'll try not to squish any bees it should just slide right on into the front of that hive and we really reduce that entrance down so that the bees can kind of control the cold air that's kind of coming into the colony and also especially late fall it's a good idea to reduce the entrance down to deal with any sort of robbing, it's a lot easier for the bees to sort of guard that little bit of territory than it is that whole width of that entrance.

09:26 - 10:07
David: So we put in our entrance this reducer that's our first thing. If you are using a screen bottom board there is an opening at the back and when it comes into winter and the wind in the winter time the last thing we want is cross ventilation, so an opening at the back which would be your regular entrance or sorry the front and then an opening at the back and that just allows wind to blow right on through there without the bees being able to control that. So with that screen bottom board you are going to have to plug that up somehow, so this is just a beveled back block that just fits in that hole. If you don't have a screen bottom board you don't have to worry about it, but that would just simply fit in the hole at the back and that's pretty easy to do, so just plug that up.

10:08 - 10:59
David: When you are talking about overwintering bees we talk about them being able to ventilate and all that sort of stuff it's very one of the biggest things is you are going to need is an upper entrance. So if you are using a wooden inner cover it should have a little notch on one side and you are going to want to put that to open. We don't use that here you've seen in a lot of the videos we use this little cloth inner cover [David opens the hive beside him to show the inner over.] so for that we have upper entrances drilled into all our boxes here, but this time of year it's very important that we have those upper entrances first for ventilation during the winter the bees will ventilate and you know push air through the colony for whatever purpose they need, but the second big thing is to get rid of condensation and humidity sorry get rid of humidity so it doesn't really condense.

10:59 - 11:29
David: These bees are breathing, a lot of humid air is coming out and if all that really warm moist air is really hitting a really cold surface up top it can condense and start dripping down on your bees, so anything that we can so the bees really need an upper entrance in order to push that out and we are trying to keep that upper entrance the top part of the hive as least cold as we can possibly do just to help avoid with that, those are your two big ones is air flow and condensation.

11:29 - 12:12
[David picks up rectangular piece of roofing insulation.]

David: So we've got that upper entrance, again we've got it drilled, but if you have the wooden inner cover you'd just have that board flipped to open. The next little bit is some sort of insolation, so this is some old roofing insolation. The only sort of insolation you don't really want to put on your hive is anything that can suck up moisture. I know that people seem to think that you want to draw moisture away from the bees, but you can just imagine after five, six months in this colony all that moisture being whipped up into that insolation wood shavings or whatever and it can get pretty damp and soggy and it can kind of get mouldy and not do the job for the bees.

12:12 - 13:00
David: So you want some sort of insolation that won't wick moisture and you can put that right on top of your colony and again that just keeps that top from getting too too cold and having that warm air meet a very cold top. Then the next thing is your winter wrap. [David picks up a black winter wrap.] So there is a variety of different winter wraps, but typically anything black is pretty darn good. These are corrugated plastic and actually what we recommend here. They are available through the Waterloo County Beekeepers' Association and they are just awesome wraps, they are very cost effective, very durable, haven't had to throw out one yet and very easy they just fold on up and to store them it's very simple.

13:01 - 13:58
David: So we'll put that wrap on, just goes over the front and then what we do is just fold up these flaps on top of that insolation, put on our lid and now the lid is made for a standard brood chamber box and now that we've got this insolation on it's not going to fit, so what we really want to do is get that back of the lid on tight and slide it forward, that way it is on a bit of an angle sloping back so any sort of the rain slush snow that is going to be pelting this lid will just sort of slop off the back and we won't have to deal with a big pile up of that sort of stuff at the front of the colony. So we have that tilted to the back and the last thing because that lid isn't on there super tight we just end up putting a brick on top of our colony and we are ready for winter. Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday.