“A beekeeper’s skill is to be able to ascertain the nutritional status of a colony, predict what the floral conditions that are immediately, and in the future, available to it and determine a course of action to ensure his/her goals are achieved. These goals may include building populations prior to a major nectar flow, maintaining populations, or even allowing populations to reduce to a more sustainable level, for instance, during a prolonged drought period or over wintering when often colonies are not foraging to any large extent. Healthy colonies are also a recipe for reducing the disease incidence. Nectar flows, for instance, stimulate hygienic behaviour in the brood nest so dead and dying adults and brood are removed more swiftly than if there was no fresh nectar stimulus”. Excerpt from Fat Bees Skinny Bees.
This publication on honey bee nutrition is for beekeepers, and covers, amongst other information on nectar and pollen components, the problems with poor quality honey, and how to see when you need to offer pollen supplements and why. As well as the issues of lack of nectar and stored honey, and the problems beekeepers face with this, with a course of action put forward. Issues with pollination and queen rearing and how to handle supplementary feeding and nutritional stress related and how does the lack of fresh pollen effect drone rearing? These are just a few of the subjects in this manual, which too presents forty four case studies from beekeepers in Australia and New Zealand. #WorthReading
© by Doug Somerville for the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation in Australia here, read Fat Bees Skinny Bees here.
© 2005 Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation.
All rights reserved.
ISBN 1 74151 152 6
ISSN 1440-6845
Fat Bees Skinny Bees – a manual on honey bee nutrition for beekeepers
Publication No. 05/054
Project No. DAN-186A
The information contained in this publication is intended for general use to assist public knowledge and discussion and to help improve the development of sustainable industries. The information should not be relied upon for the purpose of a particular matter. Specialist and/or appropriate legal advice should be obtained before any action or decision is taken on the basis of any material in this document. The Commonwealth of Australia, Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, the authors or contributors do not assume liability of any kind whatsoever resulting from any person’s use or reliance upon the content of this document.
This publication is copyright. However, RIRDC encourages wide dissemination of its research, providing the Corporation is clearly acknowledged.