Colony requirements for carbohydrate, pollen/protein, water and micronutrients across seasons and brood states.
Practical Beekeeper Standard · Competency C4
Nutrition, feeding and stores management
Assess colony nutritional status and stores and make appropriate decisions concerning feeding and forage-related management while avoiding unnecessary or harmful intervention.
Knowledge
Knowledge requirements
Indicators of adequate, declining and critically low stores.
How forage availability, weather, colony size and brood rearing affect consumption.
Common feed types, their appropriate uses and limitations.
Risks associated with feeding, including robbing, spoilage/fermentation, contamination and inappropriate timing.
Interactions between feeding, honey for human consumption, treatments and food hygiene.
Why poor colony development may have causes other than lack of feed.
Skills
Practical skills
Assess colony stores using appropriate observations and records.
Identify nutritional risk before it becomes an emergency where reasonably possible.
Select and provide an appropriate feed where required.
Feed in a way that minimises robbing, drowning, contamination and avoidable disturbance.
Monitor the colony response and stop or alter feeding where circumstances change.
Recognise when feeding is unnecessary, inappropriate or likely to mask another problem.
What assessors need to see
At least two different nutritional/store-management situations should be evidenced, including one reasoned decision rather than a routine scheduled feed.
Based on genuine activity
Knowledge may be evidenced through short written explanations, annotated photographs, small videos, records or professional discussion, but it should relate to an actual activity, colony, apiary, manipulation, observation or management decision the candidate has carried out or genuinely been involved in.
Evidence accumulates over time
One activity may map to several KSBs. Practical competence must be evidenced practically; scenarios support rare or uncontrollable situations but do not replace practical evidence where a genuine opportunity can reasonably occur.
