Winter and Spring are the toughest months, and the months your bees need you the most!
Help Your Bees By Giving Them What They Need.
⭐Bees need both protein and carbohydrate for good colony growth and to produce larger honey crops.
⭐ Feed protein patties in spring to ensure colony health, maximum build-up and maximum production for the entire year, and reduce losses and dwindling the following winter.
⭐ Save labour checking queens: Patty consumption gives a quick indication of queen and colony condition.
⭐ Patties ensure a balanced diet when bees are unable to forage due to weather o short of stored pollen in monoculture areas where only a few pollen sources are to found o too weak to forage subject to competition from stronger hives in the yard stressed by weather, pesticides, mites and diseases
⭐ Patties are easy to move around on top bars and share between hives.
Feeding Just Sugar Is Not Enough
Pollen provides most of the protein, amino acids, fats, vitamins and mineral requirements of a bee’s diet.
Nectar - Adult bees convert into honey and store in beeswax cells.
Water - Bees collect to help in maintaining the temperature and humidity of the hive and diluting stored honey to consume.
Nutrition, Quality of Nectar & Pollen
Pollen is the major source of protein for honeybees. It is largely used to feed developing larvae and young bees to provide structural elements of muscles, glands and other tissues. It is also used in the production of royal jelly, which is a speciality food produced by worker bees that's fed to the queen, developing queen larvae, and worker larvae. Pollen is made up of various substances, including proteins, fats, lipids, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and many others.
Nutrition
Survival & Longevity
Workers reared in pollen-rich colonies lived an average of 15 days longer than workers reared in pollen-poor colonies
Colonies
More Worker Bees
That have pollen supplements in early spring produce two to four times more brood than colonies that don’t, respectively rearing brood in significant amounts before natural pollen foraging can begin.
Honey
Better Honey Yields
Increased colony size also translates into higher honey yields by mid-summer, when pollen-rich colonies produced two times more honey than pollen poor colonies.
Each developing bee needs a constant protein supply for almost six weeks in order to develop properly.
The developing larvae receive protein in their jelly feed for 6 days. Then,12 days later when they emerge as young adults, they need to eat protein for the next 18 days to complete their growth into strong adults and commence their first role in the hive to feed new larvae.
If protein is available when needed, your bees will grow to be strong, live long and raise good brood. But if the protein is in short supply at any point during those six weeks, some brood will either fail to develop or become weak, stunted adults. If are also more likely to be overcome mite infestations.
In protein poor colonies, eggs and some small larvae are neglected, leaving only small amounts of patchy sealed brood. As soon as protein is provided, good health brood beings to develop again.
Feeding your bees generously is the most reliable way to ensure will survive and be strong come spring.
Just feeding a few patties, then stopping before natural pollen is available, can cause the brood to grow quickly, only to weaken again. The best plan is to provide more patties than the bees need immediately, ensuring that the bees never come close to running out until of feed until the flowers start blooming again.
Ensuring that the protein needs of your bees are met until pollen start in May
In spring, honey and pollen are fed to new the brood and the young bees to replenish the, overwintered adults. This brood is the future of the colony and the surviving adult bees invest everything they have into that growth of that brood.
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Feel Good That Your Bees Are Well Fed
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