I would just like to chip in here so that inexperienced beekeepers and novices understand that all this business of feeding pollen patties and sugar cakes is not an essential part of beekeeping, but more a commercial practice that has been passed down and become accepted practice at hobby level, without any real consideration of the necessity.
In 16 years of beekeeping (and I have the original strain of bees I started with) I have never fed my bees a pollen patty or sugar cake or fondant block and only a handful of times have I fed them syrup. I catch the swarms from my hives in the summer and put them in an empty hive and leave them to get on with it and they thrive....last year I even used an old apple crate that I fitted with top bars. I particularly wanted to keep that swarm (I had given away 12 others) and I didn't have a spare hive ready.... it is happily flying today and will get transferred to a proper hive when the weather is warmer. If I get a very late cast swarm then I may feed them syrup to boost stores for winter but it is rarely necessary. However I don't harvest much honey from them and I always leave them plenty to over winter on.
Just wanted to throw that out there so that people don't feel they "should" be doing these things. Artificially feeding the bees at this time of year (unless they are starving because they were not left with enough honey for winter) encourages them to brood sooner, so that the colonies grow larger and have more foragers to collect nectar when there is a flow. That may not sound bad, but one of the effects of this is that varroa mites also start to breed more rapidly and can overrun the hive.... so then the beekeeper needs to treat them.... Or there is a cold spell and there are not enough adult bees to cover the brood and it gets chilled, leaving it vulnerable to disease.
I suppose in some ways it is similar to keeping chickens.... if you want to get maximum egg production.... you stimulate with artificial light in the winter and give them the optimum nutrition. They will however still lay eggs (but less of course) and be quite happy if they don't get these conditions and may even live longer.
Bees are a very ancient creature though and being in rhythm with the seasons and the landscape(flora) and local climate is an integral part of how they have existed and survived the millennia. Artificially stimulating them knocks that rhythm out of sync, which in my opinion is one (granted, a small one) of the MANY reasons why bees are not thriving in many parts of the world today.
I appreciate that honey bees are not native to the American continent and that bees are shipped across the world each year to get there and are therefore already completely out of sync with their environment, but I do believe that they can adapt if they are given the opportunity. Getting locally raised bees in the first place is the best way to start though rather than buying mass produced packages.
Hope I haven't offended anyone. Just wanted to make people think about what they are doing and why.
Regards
Barbara
