Beekeeping Mixture For Feeding Honey Bees In The Spring

I'm pumping and excited to be with you again today to share with you my secret mysterious recipe that a lot of you are asking me how do you mix your spring feeding solution to feed your bees to prompt them to lay more brewed getting ready for a spring honey flow today I'm going to show you all the ingredients that I've gathered up and we're going to mix them together plus we're going to feed it to this little Hive here this poor little Hive still hanging on by a skin of his teeth and I might even open it up today not only to feed them but let's pull out a few frames and see if there is a queen in there see if she's laying but first let's get started I'll show you how you do it so I'm starting with a two quart glass jar small mouth lid I like the small mouth for some reason and then I have sugar this container doesn't have anything in it but just regular granulated sugar so I'm going to add my sugar here and once I get the sugar added I'm going to show you the other ingredients that I add to help this become what it needs to be for the bees to get the most nutritious bite for the buck for that spring feed here it is we have honeybee healthy and so in this case for two quarts I like to use about two teaspoons but you can you don't have to use that much but certainly you can go one teaspoon per quart or two teaspoons for two quarts so let's just measure it out here this is one teaspoon see it doesn't take much at all does it here's my second teaspoon all right and we're going to do the same for the amino B booster if you're not familiar with this it's a form of protein as well so again we can use two teaspoons of that Amino B booster I'll leave links in the description below once we have that measured out let's go for our protein powder we already have a b in there but we'll work around the B it takes about one teaspoon one teaspoon per quart so about two teaspoons is really all we need all right so that's all that I mix man it is windy today that's what I mix for my both fall and spring feeding and so again if you saw my video yesterday you saw how I was feeding this to prompt my bees to have more foragers in the spring and I'll leave a link at the end of this video so you can watch that video if you didn't get a chance to see it okay so we're going to mix it up really good I have hot water from my sink in the house so whatever temperature that is not boiling some people feel like they have to boil it I don't really think you have to boil it now be careful where you set your spoon down because the bees are going to want to be in that they're going to be in these jars here so we have to be careful to put Lids on that you can see them flying around I make my own lids with the little holes in them so we'll put that on there and then I have my Burns feeding board behind me we have a lot of these available online right now both 10 frame and eight frame that's pretty exciting now let's go ahead and line up the smoker so we can put everything on this little Hive and it's also we want to take a look at this little Hive to see how it's going one of the things I feel like a lot of you have told me you really appreciate it in a past video was I explain to you how to properly use the smoker a lot of these smokers come with this little piece of Steel on the bottom but unfortunately the legs are folded like this and it's usually upside down so you have trouble getting your smoker going this is a grate that holds your smoker fuel up off the bottom and so remember you got to bend these out like this and by bending them up now it's going to hold the smoker feel your paper your pine needles whatever you're using it's going to hold it up from where the air goes in and burn better it's a lot of mistakes people make right there so you want to put that in but make sure it falls so that the legs are down this is really good for new beginners because I know a lot of you will have a lot of struggles trying to keep your smoker going or get it lit I take a little bit of paper and I just light the paper first on a windy day and get it burning and then once my paper burns my fingers then I take burlap I'll leave a link in the description of where I buy this food grade burlap for bees it's really I think really safe don't have to worry about it having any toxic chemicals in it barely put that burlap in there and then get it burning ignite your smoker fuel with that first bit of paper that you have down below there and what we're going to do next is take this lid off we're going to take a look at the bees see how they're doing and then we're going to put a feeder on them hey guys I'm going to speak be speaking in Nevada at the state conference here next weekend I'm looking forward to that and I'm going to I'm going to be speaking in Kankakee Illinois in March so I've got other speaking engagements throughout the year but those are the two that are coming up if you're in those areas check those out now in this video I'm going to be announcing the winner of my giveaway course worth 289 dollars so stay tuned you might be the winner now you guys have noticed I've been feeding my bees some pollen powder out in the fields and my bees have been enjoying it and I know some of you have asked me questions won't that cause my bees to have too many bees or start raising too much brood too early in the year remember I've done this for years I need a lot of bees I live Women's Center Illinois out on the plains it can get sometimes 20 below zero chill factor and I need a lot of heater bees out there and so it doesn't bother me at all to have a lot of bees in my hive I would rather my bees be too populated coming out of winter than just coming out with a small amount of bees in the old days before I kind of started this technique I'd come out a winter with 10 000 bees like a size of a package then they were really weak and I couldn't really make splits or nucleuses that I wanted so now I'm trying to raise bees so I can sell nukes and I can raise Queens I can have a lot of bees to make splits so for me it pays to have way too many bees coming out of winter but let's take a look at this little Hive here those of you that have followed all my videos appreciate that you have seen me working this small little Hive and how it got started for those of you that just jumping in for the first time thank you so much for watching my channel and I appreciate it this small little high live here came out kind of by accident a lot of us as beekeepers we make mistakes or we do things that aren't really according to the books or what we should be doing I just put a this queen was up here she wasn't doing very well in the hive over there so I just moved her into the Super and rather than killer I thought I'd just give her a chance to see what she would do over here and boy they're still hanging on today it's warm enough for us to pull some frames out I don't recommend this for a new beginner or somebody that only has one Hive and because what can happen I can accidentally kill the Queen by Smashing her during the inspection and in February there's no way I'm going to get a queen and this Hive is toast but I'm going to try to be as careful as I can and try to take a look now what you see here is candy from my winter be kind that I'm feeding them they're eating it they're under it you can see they're just gnawing away at it but what we're going to do for the next few days and feed them some liquid feed with the mixture that I just showed you some protein powder we've got some Honey Bee Healthy some Amino B in there and so this is going to give them a little protein boost I'm going to tell you a secret that you may not have heard before don't go anywhere I'm going to whisper it to you in just a minute and when you hear me say it you're going to be amazed at how I discovered the importance of feeding bees some protein in their liquid all right so here we have a little bit of bees working down here and look what they're doing they're putting some of the pollen that they're collecting out there in these frames a lot of you asked me oh my gosh if you feed bees pollen won't it just crowd them want to just fill up too much and they're using it for food and they're not really packing away too much that's we we see but this would be a good inspection to see you know how much of the protein that they're going and getting are they actually putting in the hive and is it crowding out the hive taking up too much room for the queen to lay eggs if there is a queen in here now this Colony has a lot of bees in it there's more bees in here than it seemed like there were when I moved them over here but that may not be the case it doesn't hurt to pull up frames like this unless it has some brood on it and then you can actually kill brood by pulling it up into temperatures that are too cold so you have to be careful about that but if you do it quickly and don't hold it up in the in the cooler weather too long since there's bees on it it's probably going to be just fine everybody's rooting it's like David I got to keep watching this video all the way to the end because I want to know that poor little Hive is doesn't have anything at all going for it dang look at this I see cat brood right here I want you to please subscribe as we continue to look at this Hive Please Subscribe click on the Bell give me a thumbs up you guys helped my last video go crazy on the internet so you're helping me get my videos out every time you leave a comment you subscribe and you click on the thumbs up I appreciate it let's get back in that hive oh my gosh but again she wasn't a real good brood layer but you know in winter like this that ain't bad oh yeah more brood on this side here's a brood underneath here a lot of you are new beginners you're wondering what brood looks like this is capped over brood as you see here my finger is and it's not a bad laying pattern actually for for this time of the year at all I'm kind of excited about that all right do you want me to tell you what the secret is about feeding bees both in the spring and then they'll fall listen to this okay bees are are out there Gathering nectar in the spring bringing all this pollen back in right all this they're bringing in nectar they're bringing in pollen oh look at that they're storing some cool protein pollen powder there's some more brood in the center looking for the queen of course so when bees go out and gather nectar they bring in pollen as well on their back legs on their baskets I've been showing you guys their pollen baskets up close pictures right in previous videos and what they do when they consume and store the nectar in their honey tank honey crop there they they bring some nectar back in their honey crop but it has pollen grains in it they're proven triculous brings some pollen grains from their honey crop into the next gut and that gut allows them to have energy and and to store more of the food they're consuming the first honey crop the first tank there the that crop doesn't have any available Linings that allow any energy to penetrate the Linings of of the honey crops so it's just a storage tank to bring nectar back so I realized that everything bees consumed they really consume through a straw they're proboscis that's the big secret right there now people say bees have mandibles there's a queen yeah there she is right there see her she's not a bad looking she's a darker color Queen at the tip of my finger yep there she is okay no need to look any further let's put her safely back in there and so everything a bee eats they eat through their proboscis which means to me that when they gather nectar that nectar has the protein already in it when bees consume nectar they are also consuming the protein that they need the minerals vitamins the good stuff that they also need besides just sugary nectar they're receiving it by ingesting the nectar that already has the pollen grains in it and they do that through their proboscis by sucking up all of this great stuff so I decided wow I might just feed my bees with a mixture of sugar water that has protein in it this would be good for my bees so that's why I started feeding them one-to-one sugar water and that way I can actually add some of these other ingredients to it and it actually sort of looks like tastes like seems like and it's actually more like the real nectar that they're getting in the field real nectar has more protein in the liquid they consume so rather than me trying to work hard to figure out a way to get pollen Patties on here I just decided to feed my bees some protein in the sugar water itself I won't mention his name he did his own little personal study he works for a university and he told me that he actually colored put some colored dye in some pollen patties and fed them to bees and then took a black light a few days later out to the hives and noticed that a lot of the pollen patties which looked like they were being consumed were just being kicked Outside The Hive the bees were just carrying it Outdoors but when they when they eat sugar water that has protein in it like I've just shown you here then in that case they're not getting rid of it they're actually consuming it so which is better a protein Patty or a pollen Patty or sugar water with it in there well for me it wins because I want to feed them something they're going to eat I'm I'm putting vital nutritious things in their sugar water when they consume it it will go into their second gut if they're just going to take pollen patties and eat some of it and put and carry a lot of it outside I'm losing so let's get our jar here it is we're going to put it right in the center above where the bees are right here and it quits dripping once the vacuum grabs a hold of it and we're going to set it right here above the bees here's secret number two secret number two is when bees bees are like humans when we eat we get hot so when we feed bees and they start consuming food they can actually have a better chance at making more heat they make heat with their muscle in the thorax and they can use this muscle to generate heat just like we might get hot when we work out our our leg muscles are running and working and our leg muscles have a lot of heat to them and so bees make heat with their muscle that operates their wings and their legs and that heat is what is going to help this little small Colony make it through the winter so aren't you excited everybody the little Hive is doing good the queen has somehow miraculously started laying some eggs and got some brood winter brood going on they're out there forging I saw some coming in the front with some protein powder just now flying in with some protein powder cool stuff and it shows what you can do if you keep healthy bees and if you feed them and if you just take care of them you can keep a little tiny Hive like this alive in the worst kind of cold weather some of you have already said you've lost some bees because of cold snaps and you kind of don't know why but keeping my levels down and feeding bees getting a good Queen in there which we weren't sure about this one but they've done really well so that's pretty impressive for just a few frames of bees overwintering like this now we're going to get some things and put on top of those holes to keep the heat in there so what I'm going to use to keep heat from coming up through those holes is just some shop Rags fold them up a few times that'll keep the heat from just running up out of those holes that I'm not using on this feeding system oh yeah very good let's put a top on it so the winner of My ultimate class all seven of my online classes is Woods Wonder congratulations you won so please send an email to my staff long Lane honeybees gmail.com let them know that you won they'll get these classes sent right out to you you can see I'm already kind of drinking some of the sugar water on the screen there [Music]

Channel: David Burns

Views: 12,122

Keywords: Beekeeping, beekeeping 101, Beekeeping tips, beekeeping training, honey bees, how to inspect a hive, smoker, keeping a smoker going, smoker fuel, beekeeping classes, beekeeping basics, beekeeping for beginners, how to start beekeeping, save the bees, lighting a smoker, david burns beekeeping, varroa mite, when to start beekeeping, packages of bees, queen bee, where to buy a queen bee, beekeeping business, Feeding bees in the spring

Id: VnlZG82Sgl0

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 15 2023