?For the Netherlands it is common practice for beekeeping to make the bees winter ready. When pollen are dwindling (September most likely), we mass feed our bees sugar syrup  (>50% sugar) for 2-3 weeks. It's important that you feed liquefied sugar instead of e.g. sugar dough (the uptake is better). The syrup is offered for example in an upside down bucket with pin holes in the lit over a hole in the cover plank. Or plastic bags with pin holes in a similar way.

Depending on the quality of the colony they uptake the syrup is in a
high quality colony (heavy when you lift it one side) 0-5 kg syrup
medium quality colony 5-12 kg syrup
low quality colony, (light when you lift it), if low in uptake of syrup -> merge: they will most likely not survive winter otherwise

The bees use the  syrup the fill every empty cell in the hive: every cell where a winterbee is hatched is cleaned and filled with this syrup-'honey' to stock up for winter. After this period you see that syrup intake decreases drastically, those colonies are ready for winter (no or very low amounts of brood). After that you hardly see any bees out side.

Beekeepers removes the left over syrup, closes the hole on the cover plank (puts some isolation material on top). The lit goes on, rock on top to keep it from bowing off during fall/winter storms and ready to go until spring.

The faster the broodnest is reduced, the longer lived the winterbees are. As soon as all brood is gone, the thermoregulation thermostate can go down to 18 degrees C which is 'cheaper' for the colonies. Boosting them for syrup storage, will help reduce the broodnest quicker.

Coby

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html