Deciding How Much to Feed Bees During Winter

When winter comes blowing in, your bees may need supplemental feed in addition to their honey stores. When determining how much supplemental feed to provide your bees, first figure out how much stored honey each hive has—and compare it to how much stored honey is recommended. Determine how much to feed your bees using these tips.

How much stored honey do bees need for winter?

How much stored honey bees need varies by location—for example, colonies in the north need more than in the south. You’ll also use the strength of the colony to determine how much supplemental feed is needed, as a full-sized colony needs more stored honey than nucs do.

Nearby beekeepers are the best source of information about how much you should expect to feed, so check with local beekeeping clubs and associations to determine what your target may be. When seeking details regarding how much stored honey your hives should have, beekeepers may provide information regarding box configuration or size—for example, they may recommend a single or two deeps—but this doesn’t tell you how much honey is needed for good overwintering.

Instead, you may want to determine the goal hive weight. A general recommendation for target hive weight is 80 pounds, but again, this varies by location so check with fellow beekeepers for accuracy.

How to assess honey stores using total hive weight

Knowing what a hive ought to weigh is a useful tool in determining required supplemental feeding. Determine the total hive weight, which includes all the woodenware, bees, comb, honey, and pollen in the hive. Experienced beekeepers can lift a hive and make a good estimate of the weight, but the difference between a 100-pound hive and a 120-pound hive may be hard to discern — and a shortfall of that size can mean the difference between survival and starvation.

This is why using a scale is recommended, especially for beginning beekeepers. You don’t have to take apart the stack and weigh all the parts separately. Instead, the whole hive is weighed at once. Assess each colony on its own following our hive weighing tips.

How to weigh a bee hive

One method for weighing a full hive is to use a digital luggage or game scale with a hook attached. A handheld scale is somewhat less accurate as it underreports the true hive weight, but it’s generally an acceptable option and you’re able to re-weigh your scale as needed throughout the year. To weigh using this method, each of the sides or the front and back is lifted and weighed, then the two weights (either both sides or both the front and back) are added together. This gives you a pretty good idea of the total hive weight.

When weighing using this method:

• Be sure to do the lift as vertically as possible.
• Lift only enough to get the box off the surface.

Alternatively, you can install a BroodMinder scale, which sends current weight, temperature, and humidity data directly to your app or online tracking dashboard.

Assessing honey stores using honey weight

Winter weight can also be expressed as the honey weight needed for winter, which is the actual weight of the honey (or syrup) in the combs. To determine your honey weight, you don’t have to weigh individual frames — you just have to count them, and then calculate the correct honey weight for the size and number of full combs with capped honey or thick syrup.

How much does a frame of honey weigh?

A capped deep frame has about 6 pounds of honey and a medium frame has about 3.5 pounds. Don’t worry about counting small patches of honey tucked here and there around the contracting brood areas. To calculate how much honey weight is in the hive, count the full or mostly full frames, then multiply the number of frames by the typical honey weight for each frame size.

Reaching your target hive weight

Whether you choose to use total hive weight or just the honey weight, compare each colony with the appropriate target for its location and size. Our target winter weights can be used as an example, but your target hive weight may be different.

How to increase your hive weight

Any shortage between your current hive weight and your target weight needs to be made up. This can be done using either donated frames of honey from colonies that are over-supplied, or by feeding syrup to get the hives up to ideal weight. Generally, for every 4 pounds of granulated sugar made into 2:1 syrup, you will increase both hive and honey weight by about 5 pounds.

It can be difficult to get bees to draw additional comb late in the season: They may no longer have the 12- to 18-day-old bees needed to make new comb, and their instincts at this point are to store nectar and syrup anywhere they can, without using calories to make more wax. So, it’s easiest to add weight when there are existing drawn comb resources to store the syrup.

What if my bees don’t draw new comb?

Sometimes you’ll get lucky and the bees will start or keep drawing comb in response to fall feeding, but often they won’t — and feeding too aggressively may create problems. If you’re short of empty drawn comb and still need to feed, it’s better to feed smaller amounts in short bursts to allow them to take in and dry the syrup down before adding more. Consider using already-drawn honey supers if you need extra drawn comb to store syrup for the winter.

If all else fails, place a feeding rim on top of the hive and feed solid sugar during the winter to increase the resources available to the bees.

Heading into winter with enough stored honey is important to overall bee survival rates. Assess your honey stores by weighing the hive or estimating honey weight, then increase your hive weight through feeding your bees. For more information on how to feed bees and support colony health through winter and year-round, explore our Beekeeping Guide.

Related Links

» Read more about why to feed.

» Read more about when, what, and how to feed

» BONUS TIP: An easy no-fuss, no-measure way to make 2:1 syrup

» Read more about feeders, including DIY feeders