I have a package hive I was feeding until last month as the nectar was good.Now it's pretty much done.I have some honey to give them but I am not sure how to do it.
The only frames I have available right now are not drawn.Some are wax foundation,some are the Plasticell.
Any suggestions?
I feed straight as diluting it causes it to spoil quickly. Any kind of feeder does ok, but if it's a frame feeder etc, you may want to dilute only enough for one day at a time and feed it so they don't get stuck in the honey...
I asked the same question earlier in the year because we have a surplus of honey and that's what bees eat right? The responses were anything from what Michael suggested to "Don't do it!" there's no way of knowing if you might be spreading disease. That was enough for me to make the decision to just feed sugar syrup. Which is widely accepted by both bees and beekeepers alike.
Just my 2 cents.
If the honey came from the hive, it is ok to feed. If you don't know the hive, then you don't know just how many spores of AFB are in the honey. And something else to thing about. Honey cost more than sugar. Sell the honey, buy the sugar. But I have moved honey from one hive to another, just because I know where it comes from.
This string is almost exactly the same as one I was about to post... Let me expand on the original question: I did a cutout from a huge hive that was too big to get in one attempt. I got a 5 gal. bucket of honey that I didn't get to fast enough and it exploded with shb larvae. (I was planning on doing all the honey together, but got delayed getting the rest of the hive by rain.) I froze the contaminated honey and have been putting out chunks of comb about 25 yds. from my hives for them. I have about 2 1/2 quarts of honey that I drained out. I want to feed it back to the original hive, but don't want to encourage robbing or shb by feeding it in the hive. Open honey is usually an engraved invitation for both. Any suggestions? (By the way, the 25 lbs. of honey I took out later was AWESOME!)
Kelly
Kedgel, I have similar experiences here with the hive beetle. They don't go after the extracted honey as much though. I try to crush and strain cut outs within 48 hrs if it's a good quality honey...72 hrs and the beetles have taken over. I feed (what I call the "junk" comb...with left over brood or pollen) openly in my yards, but prefer to keep it 100 yds away or so to discourage robbing. The bees find it regardless.
Scott