How to cook sugar syrup for feeding bees. Feeding bees for the winter with sugar syrup

The best winter food for bees is their own honey. Therefore, you should not take it all. Or feed the bees sugar syrup. Any experienced beekeeper knows this. And now you will learn how to prepare sugar syrup, what proportions to observe, what can be added to it, and the most interesting thing is how to give it to bees.

As a winter top dressing, it is better than other artificial top dressings for 2 reasons:

• overloads the intestines least of all;
• least of all.

However, winter feeding with sugar syrup has its drawbacks:

• sugar does not contain proteins - there is a risk of protein starvation;
• stimulates early “awakening” (exit from the state of wintering, that is, increased activity and rearing of young animals, and sometimes premature attempts to fly out for a bribe);
• our minke whales do not eat cold top dressing, so we have to give it often, but in small portions (it is better not to raise the temperature in winter, otherwise the spring mode of reviving and procreation will turn on in the hive ahead of time).

Preparing bees for winter

Before wintering, the beekeeper has 5 main things to do with beehives that need to be done in the fall:

1. prepare a place for wintering (, omshanik, cellar, ditch);
2. reduce the space inside (to make it easier to maintain heat - let the insects touch each other with their wings, sitting on neighboring honeycombs);
3. insulate from the outside (so that there are no gaps and the air does not blow out heat);
4. protect from moisture (use breathable insulation);
5. check whether winter feeding of bees is needed.

If there is not enough honey stored (or left), then one more thing appears - to prepare sugar syrup for additional winter feeding.

How to understand that you need top dressing

At the end of August or at the beginning of autumn (if the air temperature allows), at the end of the honey collection period, each beekeeper must certainly check how much honey the bees have stored and what kind of honey it is. For 1 average family, there should be 8-12 kg (3-4 full-honey frames), depending on the length of the winter. If there is not enough honey or if it was found in the food reserves, and there is no way to replace it with normal, then you can immediately prevent a food shortage by feeding the bees with sugar syrup. In two weeks they will process it into sugar honey and leave for the winter in peace.

In the cold season, it is better not to disturb the bees. Determine the state of the family by the sound (by buzzing) and do not open the hive for no reason. Feeding bees in winter with sugar syrup is needed only in extreme cases:

• Insects starve to death when the honey runs out or crystallizes (no buzz is heard).
• Bees suffer from diarrhea due to honeydew, which has too much undigested residue (too much buzzing).

In these cases, you need to give the insects good food. Ideally, honey, but thick sugar syrup is more often used. The necessary conditions for sugar feeding are the temperature in the winter house above 2 o and small warm portions. For feeding, you can make a special feeder, or you can give sugar syrup in jars or bags.

When to start feeding bees for the winter

3 cases for which there are different feeding times:

1. Before winter, at the very beginning of autumn (until mid-September, in the south - until the second week of October), when the bribes end, there are no flowering plants nearby, and the flight stops. The bees will turn the syrup into sugar honey and put it in the honeycombs, and in the winter they will eat it like regular honey.

Feeding bees for the winter with sugar syrup and its processing takes 2 weeks. The weather needs warm: sucrose breaks down at 10 ° C and above. Early feeding will provoke a premature exit of young bees, which will also be engaged in the processing of syrup and will be depleted ahead of time; late feeding will reactivate the wax and throat systems, which will also lead to exhaustion. In addition, with a late flyby, young bees can empty themselves into combs - then honey will no longer be placed in them, and a bacterial infection can also start.

Advice: Feeders and 2 empty frames for filling are best placed in the middle. Then, at the beginning of winter, sugar reserves will be eaten, and by spring, insects will move to the outer combs and eat up the flower honey. The biological clock will not break, there will be no early activation and egg production, wintering will be correct.

1. in winter(in any month as needed) if the hive is worried about a lack or poor quality of food. In this case, the bees will eat sugar syrup instead of honey. You need to feed as soon as possible in order to have time to save the family.
2. From autumn to spring if the bees have no reserves at all. Then sugar syrup should be given monthly, constantly breaking the winter. An extremely undesirable option, since bees can survive the winter on sugar syrup well, but it is very weak to raise offspring and build wax. To do this, you need with the addition of eggs, milk, bee bread, pollen, etc.

Calculation of the amount of sugar syrup for feeding

To understand how much sugar syrup to cook for the winter, you should:

1. Calculate how much honey is missing.
2. Take so many kg of sugar.
3. Make syrup from this amount of sugar.

The volume of syrup will be larger, but when processing honey, it will turn out to be exactly as much as needed.

How to calculate how much honey to leave for the winter?

The amount of honey left depends on the length of the winter. Average consumption - a kilogram of honey per month:

• In winter - an "energy-saving" period, insects move little, almost do not eat - 750 g per month is enough.
• With warming, they consume more - 1-1.2 kg of honey.
• In the spring it is time to feed the brood: the bees create heat, spend more energy, eat 2-2.5 kg per month.

But for example, in the Urals, wintering sometimes lasts from October to May - 8 months! In the spring, offspring are actively bred, so you will have to leave about 10 kg of honey for an average family. You need 30% more syrup - 13 liters when wintering only on sugar top dressing.

Depending on the density of the syrup, the bees either dilute it with water during processing and laying it in the honeycombs, or, conversely, drain it. So that they do not waste extra energy on this, it is better to immediately make the syrup you need. consistency:

• For autumn feeding the ideal ratio of water and sugar is 2:3 (according to the results of the experiments of the Institutes of beekeeping).
• For winter feeding the mixture should be thicker and even viscous, in a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3.

How to make sugar syrup to feed bees for the winter

Whatever cooking method you choose, it is better to use the right dishes:

• Pure otherwise, impurities can cause diarrhea and death of bees;
• non-oxidizing, that is, not cast iron, not iron and not aluminum (honey cannot even be stored in such dishes)

Good options: stainless steel, enameled (glass-ceramic coating) and tinned (tin up to 100 o does not oxidize) dishes.

It is necessary to prepare winter top dressing for bees from the highest quality ingredients:

• Water- without mineral impurities. To verify this, boil it and leave it for several hours, and then drain the sediment.
• Sugar- necessarily white, purified from all impurities, otherwise it hardens in a processed form, and bees simply cannot process starch, flour, nuts (neither in winter nor in summer).

If the sugar is wet (or lumpy), you need to prevent fungus and bacterial infections: then we start preparing top dressing by boiling the sugar for 10 minutes. No need to boil! If it burns, the mixture will become unusable and can kill the entire apiary.

Sugar syrup is prepared in 4 steps:

1. boil the right amount of water;
2. pour sugar, constantly stirring and observing the ideal proportions of sugar syrup (2: 3) for bees in the winter;
3. do not boil again! Burnt sugar kills bees, and the mixture in boiling water already thickens well.
4. cool to 25-45 o and carry to the hives.

Recipes for sugar supplements for bees

Proper top dressing is 60% sugar (in other words, the proportion is: three parts of sugar to two water). You can prepare syrup with honey in the same proportion: three parts of sugar and two parts of honey. 0.3 ml (droplet) of vinegar per kg of sugar will help from crystallization.

At the end of winter, you can add to top dressing:

• Cobalt. 8 mg per 1 liter of sugar syrup or 1 tablet of cobalt chloride from a pharmacy for 2 liters. Result: increases the egg production of the uterus (if you do not exceed the dose, otherwise - exactly the opposite).
• Cow's milk. 1/5 of the volume of 40% syrup (necessarily on water) is added to the finished product, stirred and cooled to 35-40 ° C. Feeding bees with sugar syrup with skimmed or whole milk gives an increase in the weight of larvae and hatching bees. An increase in weight affects the honey collection of bee colonies, since the heavier the bees (better developed), the greater the load they withstand, respectively, they bring more nectar to the hive. But at the same time, it should be taken into account that in their life our minke whales do not meet milk and do not know its taste. They may not like such feeding, therefore milk (whole or skimmed) should be introduced into the diet of the bee colony gradually.
• Egg. 1 egg per family. Shake, strain through cheesecloth, stir in 40 about syrup. Result: protein complementary foods for young animals.
• Baker's or brewer's yeast. 50 g per 1.5 l of top dressing - grind, boil and mix with non-hot syrup. Result: vitamins and protein.
• Fumagillin and other medicines. 20 ml per liter of carbohydrate mixture (act strictly according to the instructions). Result: prevention of nosematosis.
• Needles. Weak infusion instead of water - pour boiling water over needles and young twigs, leave for 10 hours and make syrup. Result: vitamins + tick prevention.

How to give sugar syrup to bees in winter

In winter, sugar syrup should be given warm (25-40 o, room temperature or body temperature, that is, it should be felt by hand as warm or neutral), in small volumes (up to 1 liter), so that the bees eat it before it cools down (cold they don't eat) or ferment (bad for the bee's digestion - toxins and unprocessed substances fill the intestines and cause diarrhea).

What to feed the bees in autumn and winter

1. Feeders (give in the evening, do not drip on the hive and the ground, otherwise they will fly and pick up, waste their time and energy). Feeders for bees are:

• common to the whole apiary, with bridges (wooden or straw), from where you can drink and not drown. Mandatory conditions - warm weather and no bee diseases within a radius of 3 km;
• the upper ones are good because the food will naturally warm up (warm air always goes up);
• side ones (instead of frames) are good because they include more.

1. Glass jars. Close the neck with multilayer gauze so that the syrup seeps out a little bit.
2. Plastic bags. It is necessary to grease with honey - the bees will gnaw holes themselves. Packing bags already have factory micro-holes, so that the smell spreads without lubrication. It is important that the carbohydrate feed is thick, otherwise it will flood the bees and the bottom of the hive.
3. Honeycombs. Fill from the kettle and put in the hive.

The latter method is only suitable for pre-winter feeding. In winter, it is important that the temperature in the hive does not fall below zero, otherwise the syrup will harden. And finally, a useful video on how to properly feed sugar syrup in bags:

How to feed bees in autumn: when to start, feeding recipes with proportions and how to give them correctly.

Why feed the bees in autumn

We all know that our bees need to be fed in winter and spring. Everyone understands why. But why feed them in the fall? After all, they seem to have honey, it is fresh. What else do they need? However, we forget about one important point - we started an apiary so that we would have honey, respectively, we will take most of it from the bees. Or, for example, the summer was rainy and the bribes were weak. Here is the answer to this question. Among other reasons, these are the main three:

1. honey is highly sugary;
2. large reserves of honeydew honey have accumulated (it will not work normally to winter on it);
3. There is food, but the bees are inactive and they do not have enough strength and time to seal the honey.

What to feed the bees in autumn

In Russia, each beekeeper has his own recipes for all occasions (like fishermen's bait recipes). This is all because our beekeepers really care and worry about their wards. Ticks appeared - they added thyme (thyme) to sugar syrup, found signs of nosematosis - added a little hot pepper. If everything is fine in the apiary, then just for the sake of prevention, you can add a couple of drops of coniferous decoction to the top dressing to improve immunity. In Europe, a more commercial approach is thriving in beekeeping. Everyone feeds the bees wet sugar or sweet dough (kandy).

In America, corn syrup is preferred. At the same time, their bees winter well and give good bribes. True, their winters are not like ours. From this short introduction, you already understood what to put in the feeders:

• sugar syrup in different proportions;
• sugar with honey;
• sweet dough Kandy.

What is the best of all - everyone decides for himself. If the wintering was successful, then everything was done correctly. We believe that it is best to leave more honey for the bees by autumn and let them spend the winter on their reserves. But in winter, the hives still need to be checked and fed as needed.

Code to start autumn feeding

The timing of the autumn feeding of bees may vary, but not much. In the middle lane, you can start at the end of August and end on September 10-12. Late (September) top dressings are recognized as not quite physiological.

Late feeding with sugar (in the second half of September) triggers the functioning of the wax glands. And this is an additional expenditure of strength and protein reserves in the bee's body. As a result, families leave for wintering weaker and exhausted.

How to feed

For the feeding period, combs are removed from the hive and special feeders are placed. They can be both ceiling-mounted and ordinary from cans with a volume of 1-3 liters.

You can use ordinary packaging bags, plastic bottles, empty honeycombs, that is, everything you can think of.

All these methods are far from perfect and time-consuming. A constant spill of syrup provokes excessive aggression, so it is better to use a ceiling feeder. It is most convenient to do this in multi-hull hives. In the upper part there is a passage for the bees, and the feeder itself is installed in an empty case.

What to feed in autumn?

Sugar syrup for autumn has a high concentration. As a rule, it is made in the following proportions:

• for one liter of water - two kilograms of sugar;
• one to one.

Often for feeding, especially in autumn, beekeepers use inverted sugar. Such sugar is easier for bees to digest. Invert sugar syrup for bees can be prepared at home using acetic or citric acid. It is just needed in order to produce the hydrolysis of sucrose and the bees did not waste their strength on this process.

Among Russian beekeepers, the recipe of I. A. Melnichuk is most often used with the following proportions:

• honey - 7.5%;
• sugar - 74%;
• water - 18.5%;
• concentrated acetic acid - 0.03%.

After mixing all the components, the syrup is kept at a temperature of 35-36 ᵒС for a week.

Melnichuk's recipe is not the only one, there are others. For example, the simplest one: for 3 kg of sugar, 2 liters of water. Boil water and add sugar. Mix thoroughly and chill. Then add 70% vinegar essence 1 ml, or at the rate of 0.3 ml per kilogram of sugar. This top dressing is ready for use in the form of heat.

Don't rush while cooking. If the syrup burns even a little, it will not be possible to give it to the bees. Get hurt.

Natural honey is a complex product and no artificial nutrition can replace it. To facilitate the digestion of syrup by bees, enzymes are added to it, which help to decompose sucrose.

Disputes between beekeepers about whether to feed the bees in the fall with invert syrup or plain sugar have been going on for a very long time. Those who conducted experiments in their apiary noticed:

1. inverted feed does not crystallize in either open or printed combs;
2. bees process syrup well and print honeycombs;
3. wintering passes with less losses:
4. exit from wintering is more friendly, massive, fast;
5. the spring stools of the bees were thick and threadlike;
6. queens carried out stable and progressive oviposition.

The recipe for sugar syrup for autumn feeding of bees is not complicated. It must be given to bees in a warm form (temperature 25-27 ᵒС). Check the temperature with a simple touch. Cold top dressing bees take worse. As a result, even after correctly calculating the amount of syrup needed for wintering, there may be excess.

Invert syrup for bees with citric acid

Disputes about which acid to use to acidify sugar syrup also do not subside. Opponents of vinegar essence claim that it is better to use citric acid for inversion, since it is she who participates in the biochemical processes that take place in the body of an insect and cannot cause harm.

How to make invert sugar syrup and what proportions are needed:

• sugar - 1 kg;
• citric acid - 2 g;
• water - 1 l;

Procedure:

1. dissolve sugar in water;
2. put the bowl with the future syrup on heat and bring to a boil;
3. add citric acid;
4. continue heating for another 1 hour on the smallest fire.

To prepare the inverted syrup correctly, it is better to heat it in a water bath for 2-2.5 hours. In this case, the process will take place slowly, but at a stable temperature not exceeding 70 ᵒС, and the results will be the most optimal.

Invert lactic acid syrup

Lactic acid is organic and is also used for sugar inversion.

In order to prepare invert lactic acid syrup, you need to take:

• water - 3 l;
• sugar -5.5 kg;
• lactic acid - 10 g.

All components are mixed and heated in a water bath for 30-40 minutes.

Some beekeepers use natural inversion. For this, 8 kg of honey and 70 kg of sugar are taken for 20 liters of water. After preparing the syrup, it must be kept at a temperature of about 35 ᵒС for 6-7 days. If the weather is very hot, then use the sun, and wrap well at night. Light warming is allowed.

honey full

Another recipe: honey full. For its preparation, water is boiled, cooled to 50 ᵒС, and one kilogram of honey is added to one liter of water. If necessary, stimulating and medicinal substances are added.

Prepared dressings must be fresh. So that the preparation of autumn feeding of bees is not superfluous, the calculation is carried out on the family.

Some beekeepers do not calculate the dose too much, and the remaining syrup is stored in the refrigerator.

Feeding time

Top dressing is poured in the evening, when everyone who flew out of the hive on business returned home. The amount must be calculated so that by the morning it is all eaten. If there is more feeding, then the bees in search of a bribe will begin theft.

Try not to spill the syrup near the hive, otherwise ants and other lovers of free sweets will come to visit.

Autumn feeding with sugar syrup is suitable only for strong families. If the family is weak, put frames with honey to feed.

Many beekeepers, especially after wintering is unsuccessful, refuse to fertilize with syrup in the fall and leave honey. In their opinion, after honey top dressing, next year's bribes are much better, and wintering is going well. To be honest, we are completely for the fact that the bees spend the winter on their honey.

Scientific approach to beekeeping

Scientists have learned how to use yeast and microscopic fungi to obtain purified, concentrated immobilized or free invertase, which cannot be prepared at home.

Now there is no longer a need to prepare inverted syrup on your own, there are ready-made top dressings that you can buy in beekeeping stores.

22.08.2017

Feeding bee colonies is widely used in the practice of beekeeping. Each beekeeper should be able to prepare sugar syrup for bees and know the approximate proportions of its preparation.

There are many reasons for using sugar in feed. Most often, this is a replacement or replenishment of feed for the winter. But it is also used to stimulate the development of colonies in the spring or to build up young bees in the fall.

Top dressing creates the illusion of a bribe in nature. The bees themselves feed better - they feed the queen better - she lays more eggs.

Some beekeepers feed their wards for the winter, completely replacing honey with them. This is more often done in the northern regions of our continent.

Fertilizing is widely used in the spring and autumn development of bee colonies by beekeepers that left an insufficient amount of honey in the hives (or there is no honey supply within the framework).

Also, to correct the vagaries of spring or autumn weather, or because of the poor food supply of the apiary.

For example, flowering gardens.

It would seem that many flowers are a plentiful bribe. But it is worth getting colder and it is as if it had not happened.

At this time, it may even snow, the spring weather is capricious. It is good if there is enough honey in the combs in the hives. 1 - 2 weeks the bees sit out in the hives.

But, if it is not there, then it is better to feed your wards. Sometimes, it is a matter of life and death, and not just the spring development of families.

As it was in the spring of 2014.

Proportions for the preparation of sugar syrup for bees

The best food (namely for the subcortex of bees) is honey full. But she needs honey. Which, too, may not be at the right time, if it is all implemented.

In this case, only buying sugar and making sugar syrup for the bees can fix this situation.

Beginner beekeepers often face such problems. But I also have acquaintances of beekeepers, for whom it is “a matter of honor” to take all the honey from the bees and give them a feed substitute - syrup.

Of course, it is up to the beekeeper to feed his wards or not. But there are times when there simply will not be bees without feeding (they will not survive).

More in my practice, I try not to use top dressing and get by with honey in the combs that the bees applied. I have an excellent forage base around the apiary. But she can fail at the right time.

Therefore, you need to know the proportions of the preparation of sugar syrup for bees.

Beginning beekeepers should remember that thick food (2x1 and 1.5x1) is more often used in the fall. Some beekeepers use these ratios (water-sugar) in early spring, before the cleansing flight.

But I think that honey cakes or pure honey are better at this time.

More liquid food (1x1 and 1x1.5) is used more often in spring for the development of bee colonies. Such feeds create the illusion of a bribe in nature. They can also be used in the fall, but much less often.

To prepare sugar syrup for bees, many use a special table, which should be in the arsenal of every beekeeper.

All data in it are approximate (rounded up to + - 50 g), and established empirically. Any beekeeper does not really want to prepare excess feed. Especially if the apiary is small.

But in large apiaries, these problems fade into the background. I have already said that I rarely use top dressing. But if I do, I don't worry too much about overcooking the food.

The main thing is to observe the desired ratio of water - sugar. If it turns out that a few liters are extra, then I use these leftovers the next day. You can also distribute 100 g to all families additionally.

Table for making sugar syrup for bee colonies

Sugar in kilograms, water in liters.

It is known that 1 kg of sugar dissolved in 1 liter of water will give 1.6 liters of 1x1 syrup.

Hence, if we dissolve 5 kg of sugar in 5 liters of water, then we get a solution of 8 liters.

As you know, 1 kg of water corresponds to a volume of 1 liter.

Another example. To obtain a syrup of proportion 1x1.5, one liter of one liter is needed - 0.688 liters of water, to which add 0.458 kg of sugar. In the table, these figures are rounded, get 0.5 x 0.7.

Thus, when making sugar syrup for bees, do not worry too much about its quantity. Although you need to know approximately how it is done so as not to make a double dose.

The main thing is to keep the right proportions. Surplus syrup can be distributed once again to your wards.

Small video.