or block off half the hive and entrance to one side place the bees in other side and restrict entrance down to 3/4" open so that guard bees will be fewer and place entrance feeder in remaining space. Feed, Feed, Feed new hive till they are in control, all frames should have honey brood or pollen stores, then open the hive move the filled frames to center and fill in outside with waxed frames to add more brood, when the hive has built up then add another brood box when that is filled add the flow to the mis, by then it should be three boxes high brood, brooindent preformatted text by 4 spacesd, flow this will not happen overnight, wait your and move slow to build.
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Someone told me that you are not supposed to harvest honey the first year. Is that true?
It depends. You need to leave your bees with enough honey to overwinter successfully. Depending on the nectar flow and the productivity of your queen, you may or may not get enough food stores in the brood boxes to have an excess to harvest. It is very unpredictable.
I think it is fair to say that you should not expect to harvest in the first year, but if you are lucky, you may be able to do so.
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What if you take to much from them and just feed with 1:1 and bee patties for the overwinter just to give them a better chance of survivaling.
You can do that. Sugar is cheaper than honey so many commercial beeks do that.
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If you are in it for maximum honey production then that is the way to go BUT it comes at a cost for the bees. We then wonder why hives are weak, donât produce as well, get parasites, etc.
Cheers
Rob.
You can certainly do that. But honey, bee bread and pollen have nutrients in them that we canât replace with syrup and bee patties. They do much better if you just leave them enough of their own resources.
Also, the pH levels of honey and sugar syrup differ. Sugar syrupâs pH allows for some bad things to develop in a beeâs gut.
Let set up their home first, then build up from there.