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Feeding bees for winter

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StefanBohm:
Hi
I have two small colonies with just 1 brood box each, about 5 frames of bees and no honey. They didn't stock up on nectar in summer as it was a very poor season here around my backyard in WA I think this year.
I have about 3 to 4 months of winter, they still forage and it never goes below zero degrees.
I'm trying to figure out how much I have to feed with the less possible disruptions.

I'm reasoning that in a healthy hive you leave 2-3 frames of honey, about 8Kg, correct? So if I feed 2kg of dissolved sugar in 1L water for about 4 times, and then leave them alone, would that be a safe bet?
Thanks.
Stefan B?hm

BeeMaster2:
Stefan,
Welcome to Beemaster.
Feeding during winter is different than doing summer and fall.
If the temperatures are below 50 F. You do not want to bee feeding them sugar water. It causes too much condensation which if it fall into the bees is deadly.
During the winter you want to feed them either fondant or dry cake sugar. The easiest way is to pit newspaper on top of the frames and pour sugar on top of it. Spray a little water on it to make it a cake.
Jim Altmiller

StefanBohm:
Thanks for that Jim. Yes although I never had to feed in winter before I was aware of feeding dry sugar. We?re still in autumn though and just realised the thread title is misleading, and was hoping I can get the feeding done now, before winter, so I won?t open the hives in the cold months.

In any case, how much weight in dry sugar roughly I should be aiming at feeding?

Beelab:
Hi Stefan. We had the same situation last year, no rains ever, fires raging.
I never harvested from most of my hives. Just some.
Some colonies were going gangbusters and started bearding just before winter.
I did a couple of splits, one didn?t make it. I know with extra food they would have made it.

I usually do baggie feeding. You can check that often.

StefanBohm:
I didn't harvest a drop of honey here. One of the hives got honey in each frame, but not a single frame is fully capped and am leaving all the honey for them. Other hives are either low, or have none. Been an amateur beekeeper for 6 or 7 years now and this is by far my worst year.

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