Hello all!
Has anyone use Sugar Syrup as a vehicle to get the bees familiarized with the flow frames and have them store the sugar syrup there, then drain it and hope that once they’ve used it once, they will use it again in the 2017 nectar flow?
Essentially feed them to where they store in the flow-frames, then extract and have them re-supply with honey?
Thoughts?
I just scraped a spoonful (or better said hivetoolful) off a normal honey comb and put it on one flow frame. That was enough.
Hi AngoraAngy,
A few questions if you don’t mind.
What time of year did you do this and see the results? Can I assume in Spring during strong flow? Was this done upon adding the flow suppers or after they had them around for a while? Did they start filling it immediately after? Was it a strong existing hive or a new one?
Thanks,
Josh Z.
I started beekeeping this year and got my first two hives (which were last year’s splits) start of april. I let them fill up their brood box, gave them a second one after ten days, and put on the flow super on April 30th. and did the honey comb transfer in that action. They had to draw out their combs from starter strips or nothing, since I didn’t have drawn comb. On may 4th I noted that the flow frames were being worked on, but no honey yet. First honey was seen on may 13th. First harvest from this hive was on june 24th with 1,5kg from one frame, june 30th 4,3kg from 2 frames. This hive was used to get three combs for testing 3 other hives, which I supposed where queenless (they were not) and I made a split.
The other hive didn’t do that well. I made a split, as they were very strong and wanted to swarm. They swarmed anyway, which weakened them quite a lot, as I also destroyed all queen cells I found just before, not knowing they had already decided to get out. So that hive was put back quite a bit, but I was able to harvest about 4kg just a few days ago (my mother took two glasses of fresh honey as a present to my cousins wedding, which happened last weekend).
Jzelenka,
Yes ! First I rolled melted wax on both sides of each Flow-frame since it is waxless plastic. Then i sprayed all six frames with 1:1 sugar syrup. Within less than two hours a large group of bees were drawn up into the Flow-Super … Within couple days my colony was sealing all the frame seams. That was amazing !
So yes ! I’ve done it n it was successful !
Go for it … I did !
Gerald