In late winter, when you have a warm day, say 44-50 F, its a great opportunity to quickly check your honeybees and beehive. In this beekeeping 101 video, we show how we open the hive and place some fondant and a grease patty in the hive to get the bees through the last bit of winter. Links to more of our beekeeping videos at end of this post.
Note: Since making this video, we have changed our methods and are no longer using the styrofoam outer covers or fondant, but its still a good video on caring for your bees in winter. Watch our dry sugar feeding videos here.
Your honeybees may or may not have enough food stores to make it thru this last part of winter, but I am of the mind that it pays to put in some fondant. Other beekeepers will have differing opinions on this and many other practices related to beekeeping. It is too cold to feed your honeybees sugar syrup in late winter, feed them fondant.
We have produced this series of Beginning Beekeeping Videos to document our first years of beekeeping to show people how fun it really is and to demystify it, and to spread the word on raising honey bees. We are not beekeeping experts, we are still learning. Tell us your experiences below and we can all learn more.
Bee fondant and Grease Patty recipes are based on information from Cass of WVBeekeeper's Blog and the BeeSource forums . A big thank you to Cass for his writings.
Fondant from WVBeekeeper:
Fondant Bee Candy
Fondant bee candy can be fed directly to the bees once cooled. Fondant is a good food source for mini-mating nucs because there is no drowning involved when you have a small amount of bees. It is also common to use this recipe in small quantities to plug the hole on a Queen Cage.
> 4 parts (by volume) white sugar
> 4 parts (by volume) 2:1 Syrup or HFCS
> 3 parts (by volume) waterBoil water and slowly add the syrup and sugar until dissolved. Continue heating until the mixture reaches 238°F (114°C). Without mixing allow the solution to cool until it is slightly warm to the touch. Then begin to mix and aerate the solution. As you do this the color should lighten. Pour into shallow dishes or mold and save for later use. I prefer to make the fondant thin enough to where I can work it into an empty frame of drawn comb.
Grease Patties:
I made my own based on reading thru the Bee Source forums and WVBeekeepers blog.
2 cups vegetable shortening - NOT butter or other flavored shortening
4 cups white sugar
10 drops of food grade pepperment oil or wintergreen oil
¼ cup mineral block - this is a mineralize salt lick you can get at a farm - ag supply store. break off a chunk with a hammer.
mix this together and form into 4" wide patties, they have to be thin enough to be placed between hive supers.
you can wrap these patties in wax paper , put in a freezer back and freeze for future use.
Read more of our beekeeping posts here and watch beekeeping videos here. Thx!
Gilman
Good job,
One way to find out if a hive needs feeding is to tip it gently and observe the position of the cluster.
If a hive needs feeding fondant is a good way in the absence of frames with honey.
Instead of wax paper you should put your fondant in a zipper bag, make a small one inch hole and put it on top of the cluster hole down. this is done to prevent the fondant from drying out and getting hard, which is not possible from the bees to use.
Gilman
Ralph Sterling
Here in Alaska I use the Styrofoam top hive feeders, I have added a 50 watt submersible stainless steel aquarium heater, this I set at 60 degrees and about 2 days every week I plug in the heater to keep the syrup warm enough to allow the bees to be able to take it into the hive. At -20 to -30 degrees fondant or syrup turns to rock and is useless to the bees here.
As with all beekeeping this is just my idea but so far it is working for me.
Ralph Sterling
Soldotna Alaska
Eric Gunnar Rochow
wow. had not thought of beekeeping in alaska, but thanks for the comment.
Eric Gunnar Rochow
@gilman, thanks for that tip. i did a recap of our fondant feeding with a bunch of pictures here: https://gardenfork.tv/late-winter-check-and-feeding-of-the-honey-bees
Jerry Roberts
I'm a little confused about your Bee Candy recipe.
You list "> 4 parts (by volume) 2:1 Syrup or HFCS"
What are 2:1 syrup and HFCS? I''m not the greatest around the kitchen, and I'm not familiar with these. They both sound like rocket fuel to me.
My wife watches the cooking channel four hours a day, so I have to boil my own Hot Dogs.
admin
hi jerry, the recipe is one i quoted from Cass Cohenour, you can check his site in the links in the above post. i'm trying to find corn syrup that doesn't contain vanilla. thx, eric
Marty
What did you do to make the fondant solid.
I cooked the recipe and it was still liquid.
What do I need to do different?