packages question

[randydrivesabus]

I've installed packages before but I've never installed them with bee resources on hand, like drawn comb, capped honey comb, and pollen filled comb. These are going into 10 frame deeps. So what would you suggest to start them? If I feed capped honey do I need to feed syrup?

[WV Hillbilly]

      I just posted this same question over on another forum . I'm wondering too .

[Pond Creek Farm]

I am feeding capped honey to my packages this year.  I am no expert, but it seems that honey is the best food for adult bees, and sugar syrup is only a substitute.

[JP]

I am feeding capped honey to my packages this year.  I am no expert, but it seems that honey is the best food for adult bees, and sugar syrup is only a substitute.

I agree.


...JP

[annette]

I've installed packages before but I've never installed them with bee resources on hand, like drawn comb, capped honey comb, and pollen filled comb. These are going into 10 frame deeps. So what would you suggest to start them? If I feed capped honey do I need to feed syrup?

I think feeding them the honey is just fine for them. That is what they make for themselves and that is the best food for them.  I fed frames of honey back to my hives all Spring and only had to feed them a little bit of sugar syrup. (when they ran out of the honey frames) As long as they have the honey they will be fine. Just watch they do not run out. Then you would feed the sugar syrup.

Good Luck
Annette

[Brian D. Bray]

The best ways to insure your bees git off to a good start, and in the case of swarms don't abscond on you, is to incert frames of honey and or brood and use an excluder as an includer--between the bottom board and hive body so the queen can't leave.  But with packaged bees, where the queen has been shipped before she hardly has begun to lay, she may still be small enough to slip through the spacing of the excluder.  Brood is best, a frame of honey w/pollen is 2nd best if you have them available.

[Cindi]

Randy, if you have honey/pollen frames, there is not really a need to feed sugar syrup, they have enough food, unless they use this up too quickly.

Brian said to give a frame of brood and an excluder as an includer.  He said this because bees won't leave when their is brood present to keep warm or feed (should the brood be not capped yet).  That is a sure-fired way of ensuring that the bees don't leave, give them babies to look after, they won't leave when there is brood -- that is the same as any good mother, hee, hee.  Have the best of this great and wonderful day, Cindi

[randydrivesabus]

and just to take this discussion a step further, i am thinking that 4 frames of honey and one of pollen and five drawn but empty frames would work well. the honey and pollen toward the ends and the empty drawn frames near the middle.

[Michael Bush]

Stimulative feeding. Many of the greats of beekeeping have decided this is not productive:

    "The reader will by now have drawn the conclusion that stimulative feeding, apart from getting the foundations drawn out in the brood chamber, plays no part in our scheme of bee-keeping. This is in fact so." --Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey, Brother Adam

    "Very many, at the present time, seem to think that brood rearing can be made to forge ahead much faster by feeding the bees a teacupful of thin sweet every day than by any other method; but from many experiments along this line during the past thirty years I can only think this a mistaken idea, based on theory rather than on a practical solution of the matter by taking a certain number of colonies in the same apiary, feeding half of them while the other half are left "rich" in stores, as above, but without feeding and then comparing "notes" regarding each half, thus determining which is the better to go into the honey harvest...results show that the "millions of honey at our house" plan followed by what is to come hereafter, will outstrip any of the heretofore known stimulating plans by far in the race for bees in time for the harvest." --A Year's work in an Out Apiary, G.M. Doolittle.

    "Probably the single most important step in management for achieving colony strength, and one most neglected by beekeepers, is to make sure the hives are heavy with stores in the fall, so that they emerge from overwintering already strong early in the spring" --The How-To-Do-It book of Beekeeping, Richard Taylor

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfeeding.htm#when

[Moonshae]

I'm totally inclined to agree with you, Michael. I just hived two packages last week, and included a frame of honey and a frame of pollen in each. I didn't feed syrup. They had built so much comb in 6 days and stored so much nectar, I'm not sure why I added a feeder today. Conventional wisdom overriding my observation, I guess. I may not feed them again until I see they aren't finding any nectar.

[Michael Bush]

Whatever resources you have to give them will be a head start.  Drawn comb for the queen to lay in, honey for feed, pollen for feed.  All of it will give them a head start.