BBKA Forum

Hello,

Good to see this forum is back. I have made a couple of nucs for various reasons and have frames of capped invert left over and removed from my hives at the start of spring. I have given one each to the new nucs. Do you think this would suffice for feeding rather than syrup? Not in quantity terms, but the form of feed.

Many thanks,

Brigsy.

An interesting question.
We can use syrup as a 'stimulative feed' to encourage the brood nest to grow as some queens will shut down when there is no flow. So as bees would need to uncap the invert to use it compared to a syrup feed, my assumption is that the colony might grow quicker if fed syrup. However the capped invert is a great insurance policy against a lack of nectar and an impending holiday, for example, as you should not need to worry about starvation if you are away.

Thank you. I'm not that worried about encouraging growth as these are 'insurance' nucs. Just preventing starvation is my concern. Sounds like they should be ok. Logically, they should.

I sometimes use frames of stores in nucs instead if syrup but I uncap the whole frame before adding it into a nuc as this encourages them to use it more

Cheers.