Started feeding on the 21st of August 2015, I made a 2:1.3 mix, 2 kg of sugar to 1.3 ml of water. I usually feed a 3:2 mix but as I only had 2 kg of sugar at the time and did not fancy going down the shop it worked out such odd mix. still it worked.
I gave feed to hive A and D, hive without any stores, plus I took of 250 ml of syrup from the mix and diluted BeeStrong from BeeVital into it, put this into one half of the feeder and gave just under a liter into the other half. ( spoke about this in my previous post)
22.August mixed 3kg of sugar with 2 l of water, gave feed to hives A + D + B + E each received just under a liter of syrup per hive.
23. August repeated the same mix as above.
24.August having a break from the feed all together. I am going to give 2 more lots of 3:2 mix to B + E and check and see how they are doing with stores and decide whether I will give them any more or not. I am going to give them a dose of BeeStrong before the end of the year.
So far there have been wasps around the hives, but the bees seems to be fighting them off quite well, some get in, not sure how many come out, I do have 2 wasp traps just behind the hives and they seem to do a good job on catching them. Fingers crossed, touch wood, I have not noticed any other bees aggravating my own, we go there to check, just to make sure, and if need be act on it. but so far so good. Hope it stays that way, strictly speaking I should be all right as I have heard that other bee keepers have started to feed their bees so there should not be any problem coming from them only if there are wild or some forgotten bees out there somewhere getting hungry.
Varroa, I did the test and I only found 1 or 2 Varroa mites in 2 of the hives, so really chaffed with that.