Hi Waldemar

> Please give an idea about to your bees' rate of build up?

It varies very wildly and in the last 15 to 20 years the variation has been
even more wild.

Before I describe the number of frames occupied, I must point out that the
colonies that I have kept, very rarely expand to more than one British sized
box, without considerable beekeeper intervention and the purest bred
colonies may only occupy six frames even at the peak of the brood rearing.

Further south and also further north than where I live conditions are not so
overcast and so hybridised bee colonies in those areas and most of the rest
of UK will be larger and the Italinased colonies among them will probably
require more than one box or a larger hive (10 frame Langstroth or even 12
frame Dadant).

Build up starts slowly in early January, but bee numbers are small until
they accellerate in February, any colonies that have been disturbed during
the winter need close watching end of Feb/beginning of March, because they
will have consumed more stores and may not have gathered much fresh nectar
and thus may require a quick feed.

We have an early nectar flow from OSR (Canola) and the important thing is to
get enough build up to capitalise on the flow rather than let the bees use
it for their build up.

This early crop is useful, but often the bees need to use quite a large
amount of it during June, and in bad years feeding will be needed, just to
keep them alive.

Numbers of frames will seem small to you, but in January we can expect
between 2 and 5, February can be quite wild and vary between 3 and 10, once
we are into march we can expect 5 to 10 and the rest of the summer 9, 10 or
11.

Any of the colonies with low numbers will usually get a frame of sealed
brood from one of the more prolific ones in march or april.

The situation is always a bit of a knife edge and never very predictable,
but the bees are self adjusting so that if nectar becomes available they
will take advantage of it. The make or break situation depends on the size
of the June gap.


Regards & best 73s Dave Cushman G8MZY
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/ http://www.dave-cushman.net/
Temporary Set Up

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