Practical Guide: 4.2 Feeding
Feeding is an essential part of colony management and helps to compensate for periods of food shortage while ensuring the development and wintering capacity of colonies. The timing, quantity, and type of food must be adapted to the strength of the colony and the season. The information below is based on the official checklist 4.2 of the Bee Health Service (SSA).
Official Practical Guide (BGD / SSA) – Summary
Practical Guide: 4.2 Feeding (V 2212)
- Objective: Colonies must have access to adequate food at all times, including during fluctuations in the natural nectar supply. After the first honey harvest, sufficient food must be left to the colonies so that they can bridge a food dearth between nectar flows using their own stores.
- Good beekeeping practice: Food provided must not adulterate the honey. Sugar water must not be given before or during the nectar flow. Liquid feeding is appropriate after the honey harvest to build up winter stores and to develop nucleus colonies; to reduce the risk of robbing, feeding should be done in the evening only.
- Emergency feeding: During periods of food dearth between nectar flows, only fondant or honey from one's own apiary should be given. Honey from external sources carries a risk of disease transmission.
- Nectar and pollen supply: The natural food supply depends on the immediate environment of the apiary. Through the choice of apiary site and appropriate forage plants, the beekeeper can influence this environment. The example given for the Mittelland mentions early resources from hazel and willows, main nectar flows from fruit trees, dandelion, and oilseed rape, a dearth in June, followed by resources from forest, foliage, berries, green manures, and ivy.
- Two main types of food: Bees require protein in the form of pollen for rearing young bees, as well as carbohydrates in the form of nectar or honeydew, or through feeding with honey, sugar water, or fondant, which adult bees convert into energy.
- Summer/autumn feeding: After the summer harvest, the extracted honey is replaced by sugar water, which the bees subsequently process and store as winter stores. A productive colony requires approximately 20 kg of winter food. A brood frame fully filled on both sides contains approximately 4 kg of food in a Dadant hive and approximately 3 kg in a Swiss hive. If, for example, 10 kg of winter stores are lacking, the Practical Guide gives the following reference quantities: sugar water 1:1 (approx. 17 l.), sugar water 3:2 (approx. 14 l.), or invert feeding syrup with 72% dry matter (12 l.).
- Spring – food check: In spring, colony stores must be checked. If bees are clustered directly beneath the crown board or roof, this may indicate a food shortage. In that case, empty frames are removed and replaced with full ones; if no reserve food frames are available, fondant should be placed directly on the frame lugs, with the condensation water rising from the brood below allowing the bees to feed.
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Summary prepared on the basis of Practical Guide 4.2 (V 2212). Last verified: 01/2026.
See also:
- Practical Guide: 4.2 Feeding
- Principles of bee feeding
- Which syrup to choose for winter feeding
- Late-winter feeding: what to make of it?
- Practical Guide: 4.3 Overwintering
- March at the apiary
