Veteran beekeeper Allan Dick, writing in the December issue of the Alberta Beekeepers newsletter, warns that a failure to feed enough protein to bees can cost the lives of colonies.
A year or two back, some very good beekeepers I know and who had fed patties for years quit feeding patties because they figured they had enough — or even too many — bees and did not think they needed to stimulate the colonies. Since they had been feeding patties for years, they had become used to great wintering success and good spring build-up and got to taking that for granted.
HOWEVER, this year, for the first time in a while, they had late winter losses and bad build-up that affected their honey crop very significantly. Sad, but entirely predictable. The patty feeding had given their bees an edge, but the charm wore off after they quit feeding.
Allan Dick says that his beekeeping operation feeds protein patties until mid-June at least, as many as a colony will take. After beginning this regimen, he “immediately noticed that the bees were more robust-looking, BUT the huge bonus was that our wintering loss the following winters stabilized at around 12% - 15%, meaning that 85% of the previous year’s colony count was viable in mid-April” — and this consistently high survival rate kept up over a period of many years, compared to typical losses of up to 40% or “even 50% on occasion. Small, predicable losses were a huge relief after the catastrophic losses we formerly experienced and convinced us that feeding patties was good, cheap insurance.”
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