Junk food

[Mellifera Crofter]

Sorry - I'm returning to the winter-feeding topic ...

You have assured me the bees will find combs of honey to the left and right of the cluster on fine days. Despite this, I wanted to be absolutely sure they had enough to eat, so I also left them candy on top of the frames, and recently added some more candy. As this is right above them and within easy reach, are they going to eat this junk food (like us humans sometimes do) in preference to healthy honey just a little bit to their left or right? Am I making them lazy?

Cheers,
Kitta

[Jon]

They will eat fondant when the temperature is warm enought to process it, I reckon when it is 6 degrees of above.
When it is really cold they just wont touch it.
I lost two small nucs around Christmas time and both had fondant right above the cluster. The temperature was down to -14 some nights.
Under normal circumstances they work away at it.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks Jon. I did not realise they'll wait for warmer weather before eating. I thought that if they're on top or underneath the food, and they don't have to leave the cluster, they'll eat if hungry. Sorry about your nucs!

My question was more - on warmer days - will they eat candy or fondant in preference to honey if the candy was closer to them?

Kitta

[Neils]

Purely anecdotally, mine last year ignored the fondant completely which I placed in early January until sometime in February. I've only just added fondant to mine last weekend despite them still being fairly heavy with stores so I might have a better idea over the next couple of weeks, they were certainly investigating it after I'd put it on.

[Rosie]

Kitta

I think you will find that if you put fondant on a hive that has sufficient honey for the winter it will still be there, untouched, in the spring. That tells me that they prefer honey. I suspect that they would prefer sugar honey to fondant too but I am not sure.

Rosie

[gavin]

Usually the warmth from the cluster and the moist air coming off it helps them use fondant which is immediately above their heads. As in, straight on the top bars or on a queen excluder placed over them. The crown board is too far away.

If you laid out a choice test on a flat board - if such a thing is possible with honeybees - I would imagine they would go for the honey. There is certainly pollen in honey, and no doubt other goodies too that they find attractive. But they get by fine on fondant if they are short on stores. I was intending to check on mine at lunchtime today, but the heavens opened and the temperature dropped several degrees so I'm still none the wiser about survival since I last saw them in late December.

[Jon]

I haven't seen any of mine since late December either but Mervyn said they were flying strongly two weeks ago when he took some samples.

re the fondant, it can't do any harm if you think stores are low but if the temperature is below zero for a week I don't think it will prevent starvation.

[gavin]

Do you mean in a very small cluster, Jon? If the bees are starving they are likely to be high on the frames, and close to where the warmed fondant is to be found. I would have thought that in the majority of cases fondant would stop starvation. Maybe not if the cluster has committed to raising brood at some distant location. Last winter I learned the value of insulation (no, I learned the penalty of not insulating) as the warmer it is the less likely isolation starvation will happen.

[Jon]

The two nucs I lost had very small clusters but had fondant right above them.
The fondant might as well have been a breeze block as it was frozen solid.
A bigger cluster probably would not have the same problem.
One of them had a dodgy queen and probably would not have made it through the winter anyway.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks for everybody's thoughts on honey v candy. It's good to know, Rosie and Nellie, that your bees ignored the fondant in favour of honey. That means I'm not tempting the bees away from proper food, but that the candy is simply emergency food in case they need it. I think I'll try your suggested experiment later this year, Gavin.

What is 'sugar honey', Rosie? Honey dissolved in sugar syrup?

Kitta

[gavin]

Or maybe honey thickened with powdered sugar?

Bottom of this page for queen candy:

http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/feedingcandy.html (http://website.lineone.net/%7Edave.cushman/feedingcandy.html)

[Rosie]

What is 'sugar honey', Rosie? Honey dissolved in sugar syrup?

By "sugar honey" I meant the stuff the bees make from syrup fed to them for winter. Some people call it "shoney" others say "phoney". Whatever you call it I think it's basically concentrated sucrose with a small amount inverted and some enzymes added. If you feed them too much of it in the Autumn you can be left with plenty remaining in the Spring which will be moved, by the bees, up into the supers where it will contaminate your new honey crop.

I have been weighing my colonies throughout the winter for a number of years and now have a good handle on how much to feed them but if I slip up or am unable to feed enough I have to resort to adding fondant in the winter.

I think the best policy is to encourage them to store enough honey in the brood box by removing the supers early enough in the Autumn. Then they will be able to survive the winter on real honey and contamination in the spring would not be an issue. I only feed my light ones in the Autumn but last season was so disastrous around here than I had to feed almost all of mine.

Rosie

[chris]

I think the best policy is to encourage them to store enough honey in the brood box by removing the supers early enough in the Autumn. Then they will be able to survive the winter on real honey and contamination in the spring would not be an issue.
Rosie

This is always my aim. I normally take off my last super mid August. That means the bees have the late summer/autumn flowers for filling the cells that become available as queen laying diminishes. Of course different places have different climates so the exact moment varies. Also, I don't have late flows like ivy to mess it all up.

[Calum]

Hi,
Re Gavins post on insulation -none of my hives have insulation and are all fine with months of minus degrees here going right down to -25°C must have been something else (aswell)!

I do not like insulation as it encourages a longer period of small brood nesting this increases the varroa population more than anything else.

Fondant feeding from above should just be a last resort when it is clear that the bees will otherwise starve, it is not without its risks that Ilisted on other threads (I'll refrain from copy pasting:) !).

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks again for all the answers. Calum, I searched through all your posts and now realise that I have slightly duplicated an earlier question in the thread 'Feeding Fondant'. I was away at the time
- as far as broadband was concerned, out in the bundus - and missed that thread. Still, I learned lots of new things in this thread. Thanks to all.

Kitta