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Beehives
- Complete beehive
- Accessories
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Nuc hives
- Nucs by format
- With bees & mating
- Spare parts
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Bee equipment
- For the apiary
- For the beekeeper
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Clothing
- Clothing Accessories
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Beeswax
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Pure beeswax
- Beeswax and foundation
- Beeswax foundations
- Melting and rolling beewax
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Pure beeswax
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Bee feed
- Accessories and source materials
- Utensils
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Bee health
- Varroa Treatments
- Diseases control
- Nutraceuticals
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Extraction and bottling
- Before extraction
- Honey extraction
- After extraction
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Bee pollen
- Harvest
- Indicted
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Honey packaging
- Flasks per utility
- Flasks by size
- Other packaging
Apipasta with vitamins 15kg
Beecomplet® Spring 14Kg
Beekeeper suit with round veil
Oxalic acid 1kg
Beeswax Foundation 5kg
Fresh royal jelly 20g
Classic honey jar 1kg comb-lines TO77 - Pack of 16 units
Promotor L Apis 1 litre
Stimulation Feed for Bees
Inverted and stimulating syrups: Beecomplet®, Apimix, Apifit, inverting agents for making your own syrup and herbal stimulants. From a single kilo to a pallet.
Stimulation feeding
Stimulation feeding is more of a management technique than actual nutrition. The goal is to promote colony growth by mimicking a nectar flow, encouraging the queen to lay eggs.
Traditionally, it was done early in the year, before the main nectar flows, to quickly increase population, allow for the creation of early splits, and ensure the colony had enough bees for the spring honey harvest.
However, due to climate change, there are situations where autumn stimulation is needed to help raise healthy winter bees that will carry the colony through to the next spring.
What are the key conditions for effective stimulation feeding? It involves liquid sugar feeding, with higher or lower moisture content depending on the season. Start about a month before you need those new bees, when outside temperatures are around 16 °C, the colony is strong enough, and there is a steady supply of good quality pollen.
Practical tip: to make the most of nutritional supplements, ensure the colony has enough bees—or reduce the available space. Feed close to the brood area. At this time of year, temperatures can drop unexpectedly, and if bees have to move to the edges of the hive, they may chill and drown, especially when using frame or top feeders.
Stimulation Feed for Bees
Stimulating means tricking the calendar: giving the colony the signal that nectar is coming in so the queen lays and the population rises before the bloom you care about.
When and why
You stimulate six to eight weeks before the moment you need the hive strong — a forager takes about three weeks to emerge and another two or three to fly. Stimulating late does not arrive in time; stimulating with no pollen available produces brood that cannot be fed.
Inverted syrup or sugar
Inverted syrup has the sucrose already split into glucose and fructose: the bee spends less energy and less time processing it. A home sugar syrup made badly or overheated forms HMF, which at high concentrations is harmful to bees — which is why improvising is a bad idea. The inverting agents (INVERTOFIX) exist for anyone preparing their own syrup with control.
The rule that avoids disaster
Do not stimulate with supers on. The syrup going in can end up in the harvest honey, and that is no longer honey. You stimulate first, remove the feeder, and only then put the supers on.
And watch for robbing: open syrup in a weak apiary triggers raids. Closed feeder, at dusk, without spilling.
For wintering, what you want is maintenance feed; feeders are in feeders.