← Bees
H29-06 · Module 6 of 7 · Pages: 19 · Worksheets: 5
Overwintering and feeding
How much food a colony needs for winter, how to judge and weigh stores, how to make syrup and fondant, prepare the hive and see the bees through dangerous March
€9
Secure checkout with Stripe · VAT included · The PDFs are in the language of this page.
Whole series: Bees, €39
In short
- For winter a colony needs 15–20 kg of food (lowland UK and Ireland), 20–25 kg in uplands and the north, 10–15 kg on mild coasts; in cold North American zones more.
- Finish winter feeding with 3:2 syrup by mid-September.
- Heft or weigh the hive in autumn and in March; a light hive needs food at once.
- Never bought or other people's honey for fondant: risk of American foulbrood.
- In winter, leave them in peace: don't open, don't knock, protect from mice, damp and woodpeckers.
- March is the most dangerous month: fondant over the cluster, not syrup in the cold.
What's inside
Chapters
- What a colony needs for winter
- How much food and how to measure it
- Honey or sugar for winter
- Winter feeding: 3:2 syrup
- Stimulative and spring feeding
- Fondant
- Preparing the hive for winter
- Nucs and weak colonies
- Winter: peace and listening
- Late winter and spring: dangerous March
- Common mistakes
- Printable checklist
Worksheets
- Feeding calculator
- Syrup calculator
- Stores and feeding record
- Wintering calendar
- Winter log and preparation list
Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.
This guide in other languages: