# Feeding Swarms 1:1?



## betrbekepn (Aug 7, 2006)

My plan for 07 is to populate my apiary with local feral swarms. What's your guys opinion on feeding a captured swarm 1:1 sugar syrup to get them started? I'd rather not feed them so I don't have to buy feeders\feed.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>What's your guys opinion on feeding a captured swarm 1:1 sugar syrup to get them started? 

The swarm obviously wasn't planning to be fed, but it will give them a much more reliable start.


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## BULLSEYE BILL (Oct 2, 2002)

*Jump start*

If you want them to really kick in, not only give them syrup, but add a little pollen patty and a frame of brood from one of your other hives every week for about a month. If they don't use the patty or the syrup, remove it, but keep adding frames of brood. If you do this you might even get some surplus honey from them this year.

Most of the queens you get with swarms are not desirable queens. They are the old queens and queens being replaced. The exception is the small afterswarm, it is usually a new queen.

When you get a monster swarm consider pinching the queen after she starts laying and let them raise a fresh one. If you keep adding brood frames as mentioned above, you will not set them back very much.


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## betrbekepn (Aug 7, 2006)

Thanks MB\BB!


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## Jeffzhear (Dec 2, 2006)

Just out of curiosity; Is a 1 to 1 ratio of sugar to water by weight, close to a 1 to 1 ratio by volume? I had always mixed it by volume, but maybe I was mixing it wrong?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Just out of curiosity; Is a 1 to 1 ratio of sugar to water by weight, close to a 1 to 1 ratio by volume? I had always mixed it by volume, but maybe I was mixing it wrong?

Since a pint of water weighs a pound and a pint of sugar weighs a pound, you can do it anyway you like.

Just take a wuffle of sugar and a wuffle of water and mix them and you'll have 1:1 syrup. It doesn't matter WHAT a wuffle is.


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## Jeffzhear (Dec 2, 2006)

Michael, ty....so I will continue as I have been.


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