I came along in the evening to feed the queenless parent colony. It's recommended to feed only after the bees have stopped flying for the day if possible, otherwise all the foragers realise that there's a great new source of food coming in and all rush out of the hive trying to locate the source of it (unaware of course that the housebees are just bringing it down from the roof-space feeder!)
Bees are notoriously 'sleepy' after dusk - these ones were so slow that I had to brush them all out of the way before I could put the feeder down.
The recipe for spring feeding of sugar syrup is much more diluted than the autumn syrup - 1kg of sugar to 1 litre of water.
Even though they were all moving slowly, a few did come up within a few moments to start feeding.I won't be feeding the swarm colony yet. I'd like them to use up the last of their old honey stores in building up the foundation if possible - it's all been affected by the chemical varroa treatment I used so I need to make sure it's all completely used up if I want to even consider a honey harvest this year.
I won't be needing to use more chemical treatment now that we've created an artificial swarm. I can do some nifty frame manipulations over the next few weeks (if all goes to plan) and trick all the varroa into being exterminated (in theory, anyway!).
I wish I'd known that they were going to swarm so soon as I'm reluctant to use any chemical treatment unless it is necessary.
