Sugar budget per colony

What do you reckon to be the normal consumption per hive for your hives for the year?
or put it another away total yearly purchase of sugar divided the number of colonies?

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Hive must ne fed full in autumn. Otherwise bees do not cap stores. They take in what they can.

£0 for me. I have a backlog of Ivy stores taken off the colonies the past few Springs. Swarms are munching through them at the moment

derekm said:

What do you reckon to be the normal consumption per hive for your hives for the year?
or put it another away total yearly purchase of sugar divided the number of colonies?

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Perhaps a better way of looking at it is what do they need? This depends on the size of the colony and the box they live in. I fed a 12.5kg container of Ambrosia to each of my colonies last autumn and most came through in spring with at least 4 frames of sealed stores. These colonies are in Paradise Honey Langstroth Bee Boxes so you may need to adjust the figure depending on what you are using. When I used plain sugar, I would aim at 10-20kg depending on how much they needed.
The important point is that you keep track of how much they are costing and how much honey you harvest. It is nice to have bees that can forage late in the autumn and cost you very little, but, what if your area has little/no autumn forage?

+1 to Ely. Virtually zilch for getting on for ten years.

Small amounts on very few small overwintering colonies/nucs and some for new colonies, but not often and not worth worrying about. I use far more sugar while fermenting country wines and cider/beers.

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Nothing wrong in sugar feeding. 20 kg honey to the hive over Winter is really expencive.

Beekeepers are so poor that they cannot buy even good queens. £ 10-15 / hive for Winter sugar.

But same guys are ready to buy Ambrosia and other stuffs which have 3-fold price. Carry on with your budgets.

derekm said:

What do you reckon to be the normal consumption per hive for your hives for the year?
or put it another away total yearly purchase of sugar divided the number of colonies?

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None.

which also means I can genuinley state that my honey is pure.

finman said:

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Hive must ne fed full in autumn. Otherwise bees do not cap stores. They take in what they can.

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must?

Dishmop said:

None.

which also means I can genuinley state that my honey is pure.

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What is your honey selling budget

Dishmop said:

must?

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It is must if you understand beekeeping. Beekeeping means honey production.

But not must to do nothing guys.

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Never bothered to do proper calculations but suppose for this winter a beek left enough stores for the hive to survive into next spring....Ok some money lost because less honey to sell, but not the full amount because the beek didnt have to buy 20 kg of sugar...£10 ? ..

The loss is £XX..... but if you consider it as a loss the same as buying new frames etc next winter you are a few frames of stores in credit to leave them for winter and again no sugar costs.
Plus you have saved the time involved in feeding.

Finman said:

It is must if you understand beekeeping. Beekeeping means honey production.

But not must to do nothing guys.

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So a "do nothing guy" is somebody who doesnt take all the honey?

The only reason you HAVE to feed yours is because you dont leave them any of their own stores....

Beekeeping means honey production

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but it doesnt mean that we have to sell it.

Finman said:

What is your honey selling budget

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Not sure what you mean...

Do you mean profit?

Finman said:

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But same guys are ready to buy Ambrosia and other stuffs which have 3-fold price. Carry on with your budgets.

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I only bought it because my local association bought a load in and was selling it pretty cheaply. I heard that it didn't ferment but I found that wasn't true. I doubt I'll be using it again

Dishmop said:

Never bothered to do proper calculations but suppose for this winter a beek left enough stores for the hive to survive into next spring.....

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When I sell 20 kg honey, I get 90 €.
20 kg sugar is about 20€.

. I cannot understand, why beeks do not extract their honey and why you teach it to beginners

Finman said:

When I sell 20 kg honey, I get 90 €.
20 kg sugar is about 20€.

. I cannot understand, why beeks do not extract their honey and why you teach it to beginners

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because some of us prefer to leave stores and not feed them sugar. Its nature.
We dont say that we dont extract any honey....just not all of it.

When I sell 20 kg honey, I get 90 €.

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Less expences..and time...and travel...

Finman said:

When I sell 20 kg honey, I get 90 €.
20 kg sugar is about 20€.

. I cannot understand, why beeks do not extract their honey and why you teach it to beginners

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That seems very cheap. For 20 kg, that's 44lbs, which would give me £176. Or have I made a mistake? I assume your price is for bulk sales?

I leave my bees with mainly ivy stores for overwintering so sugar costs are minimal.

Cazza

Cazza said:

That seems very cheap. For 20 kg, that's 44lbs, which would give me £176. Or have I made a mistake? I assume your price is for bulk sales?



Cazza

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Mistake..... No, we have different markets.

I cannot take supermarket price.

Lowest prices in supermarkets are 11 €/kg with Finnish honey. If someone gets more, good for him.

Mistake..... No, we have different markets.

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and different calculators that dont work..

Finman said:

Lowest prices in supermarkets are 11 €/kg with Finnish honey. If someone gets more, good for him.

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The standard 1lb (454g) is used here although, as the price of honey increases, smaller jars are becoming the norm.
We have Chinese honey or "blend of EU and non-EU" honey being sold for far less than it costs to produce. 11 €/kg is probably not far off the cheapest "honey" on sale here.