Rain again today in Virginia, so I can only write
about keeping bees. (Writing about beekeeping
is like dancing about sculpture...)
Chris Slade mused:
> In the case of established colonies (now swarms)
> why should one feed at all to get comb drawn?
Because he wants a harvestable honey crop.
This year.
Not next year.
New beekeepers want some HONEY to show for their efforts
the first year they keep bees. This is not easy when
starting from packages or nucs in areas where the nectar
is mostly from "spring blooms".
To optimize the harvest (or to have any harvest at all with a new
colony in the first year), one wants to get the comb drawn before
the nectar flow, and get the queen laying at full speed, or one
looses the harvestable results of the flow while a smaller number
of bees merely draw foundation for the entire period of the bloom.
Which would you rather have available to the bees when the spring
blooms start to produce nectar, drawn comb or foundation?
> If there is nectar coming in then bees at around 10 days old will
> be producing wax anyway which they can either build into comb or
> allow to fall to the hive floor and be wasted.
But the difference is timing. The more drawn comb one can slap on
a hive (or draw) before the bloom, the larger the harvest that
results. This is a well-researched issue, not a matter of opinion,
and it makes sense. With more comb surface area, more nectar can be
evaporated down into honey more quickly. With more brood comb
available early, the queen has space to lay more eggs, which means
a larger number of comb drawing, and later, foraging bees.
> If there is no nectar coming in there is no need for comb to be drawn.
Sure there is! Do you want the population to be limited by the subset
of a "nuc" (3 or 4 frames) where then queen will lay? Of course not.
You want a fully drawn full-width brood area well in advance of the
first bloom.
Timing is everything!! If the temperature is warm enough, and feed
is supplied, you can get ahead of the game in both comb drawing and
brood rearing. Heck, I started feeding in February, just to get
a jump-start on brood rearing. Carrying feed to hives through the
snow is part of my normal yearly plan.
The original question came from a very astute "beginner" with
two nucs who said he wants to:
a) Get a deep brood chamber comb drawn out, so that the queen
can have some room to lay beyond the limits of the nuc frames.
b) Add a second deep brood chamber and draw it out.
c) Add a medium "honey super", and draw it out, so it will be ready
for some sort of harvest at some point.
If he does not feed the colony now, no serious comb building will take
place until the first significant bloom. Since he is in NE Ohio,
April's blooms would be Maple, Elm, and Birch trees. Not very exciting.
May/June in NE Ohio would have more blooms and better blooms (Clovers,
Black Locusts, Honeysuckle, Tulip Poplar...) so the game plan would be
to do his best to at least get a single full deep drawn in April, and
get the population up for late May/early June. A very tight schedule
this late in the game.
My view is that without lots of feeding now (and some luck) he will get,
at most, a goldenrod crop in August, given that he is starting with
nucs, no drawn comb, and has been told that he must draw out two deeps.
(What sadistic joker convinced him to draw out two deeps in spring?)
I'd submit that he stands a better chance of getting a harvest this year
by drawing one deep now, then adding the honey super, and adding the
2nd deep to draw (by feeding) in late July or early August after the major
nectar flows are over, and after he has taken his medium (crop) off.
This may force him to feed through July and August to draw the 2nd deep and
give the bees sufficient winter stores, but the bees will not complain.
> A commercial beekeeper... I doubt whether he will be a better economist
> than the bees who have spent millions of years learning to get the balance
> right or die. An amateur beekeeper can afford to relax and enjoy the bees
> doing their own thing as the season progresses and minimize unnecessary
> interference.
The bees' agenda for the last few million years did NOT include having
someone remove a significant fraction of their stores. Yes, the amateur
beekeeper can simply let the bees build comb as blooms happen, build up a
population, and perhaps even build up some stores for winter, but will
this result in a solid two deeps by winter? Doubtful. Will this result
in a harvestable crop this year? Almost certainly not. He likely would
get the drawn comb, see a population peak in August during a nectar dearth
which would eat into stores, and end up having to feed in fall anyway.
This fellow (like ALL new beekeepers) wants to proudly present a few
friends with some honey >>>THIS<<< year. It need not be much, a single
medium of extracted honey or a single super of Ross Rounds would be enough.
But here's what happens with quite a few new beekeepers:
1) He buys stuff (somewhere around $200 - $300)
2) He get some bees (around $40 - $50 per colony)
3) He follows the suggestions he finds on the internet
(Lord protect him!), or in one of the basic "how to
keep bees" books.
4) But he does not get a crop in the first year unless he
pushes the bees as early as possible, or jump-starts
the bees with some drawn comb from an experienced
beekeeper (or group) who takes him under their wing.
5) Now he has to winter his bees, which is a dice roll for
any small number of colonies. He could loose them all,
even if he did everything "by the book".
6a) A year has gone by, and if his colonies died, he must buy
new nucs or packages, and feels that he is "starting over".
Not even a single 8oz bottle of honey has appeared on the
table from his hive, he has spent much time and money, and
all he has to show for his efforts is an stack of boxes,
some stings, and a number of funny, but slightly embarrassing
stories about "what the bees did", or "what he did". When
he tells non-beekeepers these stories, their eyes glaze over
for a bit, and then they respond by asking "So you must have
a ton of honey, right? Can I taste some?"
6b) With luck, his colonies survive winter, but the "satisfaction"
of merely keeping colonies alive does not compare to the
satisfaction of getting a crop, even a small crop. (If he
wanted to simply keep something alive, a goldfish might be a
better choice!) He starts to wonder if he will EVER get any
honey to put in the case of mason jars that remains unopened
in the pantry.
No wonder so many people "give up" after a year or two!
When people plant a garden, they are sure to get some sort of
crop that fall. No one understands that a crop of honey is
difficult to get in the first year from a package or nuc unless
one's hives are placed in a large field of clover or canola, and
one is blessed with good weather.
I'd bet that if someone surveyed beekeepers and ex-beekeepers,
one would find that losing colonies does not prompt a new
beekeeper to "give up" as much as not getting a crop.
The new beekeeper does not have to tell his friends that his
bees died and had to be replaced, but a lack of honey is an
obvious embarrassment that cannot be denied. Without honey,
he feels that he has somehow "failed", and everyone will ask
him "Did you get any honey yet? Can I buy/have/taste some?"
Someone in Ohio needs to make up a gift pack for this fellow -
frames of drawn comb. Someone needs to give (or sell) some
drawn comb to EVERY new beekeeper, simply so they can enjoy
the pleasure and pride of a harvest in the first year.
Someone also needs to back each supplier of "beginner kits" into a
corner, and get them to stop providing "deeps" to hobby beekeepers
by default. Mediums would make the first year less problematic,
and would prevent the age-old problem of bees that fill up the
deep(s) and never put much in the honey supers above. Mediums make
life much less complex for a new colony, since one can build the
colony in smaller increments, and defer some comb building for the
long hot days of late July and early August after a harvest.
100% mediums make every year easier for me. When all one's comb is
the same size, one can deploy comb with the aplomb of a blackjack
dealer, confident that you have the resources to cope with any/all
scenarios.
jim (who knows that "comb is where the heart is")
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