Feeding Honeybees
Sugar and spice, all things nice
Basic Assessment: Describe the preparation of sugar syrup, when and how to feed bees, and the importance of stores.
Most beekeepers occasionally use sugar and perhaps pollen supplements to keep their bees in good condition. It takes healthy, strong colonies to make honey. Natural beekeepers feel that standard beekeepers mistreat their bees. Bee are wild animals, not farm animals. It does not feel like that to me. Feeding is part of the joy of looking after these magical creatures. Concentrating nectar to form honey is a surprising energy intensive task with 25–60% of the sugar in nectar being metabolised in the process. Feeding thick sugar syrup reduces the work needed by 15%.
Feeding
Sugar is given as a dilute or concentrated solution:
Thin syrup is a dilute sugar solution that emulates nectar; it is for immediate use and stimulates them to create brood or helps them to recover from starvation.
Thick syrup is a concentrated solution that assists them in laying down stores.
How to feed
Top feeder picture @Beekeeping Supplies UK
Feeders
Large contact feeder: 2.8 litres. Frame feeder, small contact feeder 1.0 litres. The entrance feeder 800 ml (yellow) is useful for giving them water.
Contact feeders are pots with tiny (6 mm or less) holes in the lid, that are initially filled with syrup and inverted over a bucket where some syrup leaks out. The rest of the syrup stays inside due to atmospheric pressure (not a vacuum). If atmospheric pressure falls, some syrup leaks out. The bees treat the holes as any other cracks and fill them with propolis.
Frame feeders (brown) sit in the hive like a frame. They are fine for giving a colony a short boost but are not ideal as the hive needs opening to refill them, and some bees drown. Putting straw, floats, or fishing net in the feeder helps prevent drowning. I worry that the queen cannot swim. I’ve tried it, but too many bees drowned.
Top feeders take 1–3 litres with a bagel-shaped feeding slot. Just as with Contact feeders, they are placed inside an eke above the frames.
Open feeding: Place a container of syrup near to the hives; cover it with straw to prevent bees from drowning, and place a lid on top to prevent it being diluted with rainwater. Apparently, feeding like this does not cause robbing or aggression, but has a calming effect (like a nectar flow). Care must be taken that cows and other animals do not drink the syrup because this could be fatal. Bees from your neighbour might discover this bounty, and you will feed their bees as well as yours.
The entrance feeder is yellow (also known as a Boardman feeder). It can be used for water, or sugar syrup at times when robbing is unlikely.
Paynes rapid feeder
Rapid feeders are larger feeders with a footprint the same size as the top of a box. They can only be used if the hive is dead level. Although capable of holding 10 litres of syrup, I don’t recommend more than 5, otherwise if you need to remove the feeder the syrup sloshes around and spills. These feeders are usually used in the autumn. There are two designs: Millers (like the Payne’s feeder) and Ashforth (like the BeeBox feeder).
A Miller feeder has a larger feeding area.
An Ashforth has a slope down to the feeding slot. The slope means that when feeding is complete, the bees can be released to clean the feeder without getting mired in puddles of syrup. This advantage is theoretical, as the syrup gets scummy.
It does no harm to clean the reservoir with a cloth between feeds. When feeding is complete, check the walkway before shaking the bees out; there is a miniscule chance that the queen is there!
Fondant is in a blue package. It shows how the bees chew the cling film from where it covers one edge of the block.
Water carrier - so much better than a billy can
Special bee fondant
Sugar Formulations
Types of syrup
Nectar contains a great variety of sugars and many other constituents, about 300. The proportions vary according to the plant species. The bee’s preference is sucrose > glucose > fructose. Surprisingly, bees live longer if fed table sugar rather than honey. So, there is nothing to suppose that honey is best. High Fructose Corn syrup is as effective as sucrose. Only use refined white sugar rather than organic or brown sugar, as brown sugar causes diarrhoea.
Sucrose solutions — measurements do not need to be precise.
Thin: 1 lb (0.45 kg) of white granular table to 2 pints (1.14 l) of water.
Middling 1 kg to 1 litre
Strong: there are three methods:
1 kg to 630 ml water
One litre of sugar to one pint of water.
Use a jug: Fill it with sugar. Pour in water until it reaches 2 cm below the surface.
Heat raises Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) levels, which are toxic to bees. Legally, levels in honey must not be higher than 30 mg/kg. This would happen if you heat a solution to 70 °C and maintaining this temperature for 10 hours, or heating it to 50 °C and maintaining the temperature for ten days. HMF is not toxic to humans.
Hot water helps dissolve sugar; however, it is possible, if you don’t need much, with patience, to make a 1:700 solution using cold water. Agitate the mix for half a minute, every once in a while. I rock the container back and forth. It’s tedious. When you feel fed up, peek through the bubbles or bottom to see how many crystals remain. If only a few, if possible, leave it overnight, and by morning, it should be a clear solution with a brown tinge.
Inverted Sugar syrup
One important component of nectar is sucrose; this consists of two simple sugars called glucose and fructose, These sugars are lightly bound together. Chemicals called enzymes enable chemical reactions to take place more rapidly. Bees naturally add an enzyme called invertase to sucrose, and invertase splits it into glucose and fructose, which are the chief constituents of honey. Providing inverted sugar does not save bees’ work because invertase does it for them! Furthermore, bees’ own enzymes happily make honey acidic. Invert sugar can be used both as a stimulative feed and to lay down stores.
Reasons for feeding
To stimulate bees (encourage the queen to lay), give a thin (or middling in Australia) sucrose solution that emulates nectar.
To help them accumulate stores. Give thick syrup.
The reason for feeding determines the optional rate of feeding. For example, the syrup must be given slowly and continuously to keep the queen laying through a dearth. For storage, the syrup can be given with wild abandon. To avoid stimulation, use fondant, powdered sugar or honey. Powdered sugar is provided by sprinkling it on the crown board and is used routinely at the antipodes.
If you give syrup when nectar is available, they reduce their foraging. The stronger the solution, the less they forage. So, with some forage and fine weather, weak and strong syrup have the same effect. If there is plenty of nectar, they won’t bother with the syrup.
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Pollen
Beekeepers collect pollen at the entrance by making bees squeeze through a slotted screen, slightly larger than a queen excluder (QE). Some pollen in their pollen sacs (corbiculae) is scraped into a tray.
Colonies must store plenty of pollen in the autumn for brood rearing in the winter and spring. They mix it with honey and a little oral secretion and cap it with wax so that a frame of pollen has a slightly glazed appearance. Pollen stored like this is called bee bread. When you recycle old brood frames, they are often stuffed with otherwise invisible pollen.
Pollen in trap. © Crown copyright
Bees packing pollen © Crown copyright
Bee bread with some honey stores on the left.© Crown copyright
Pollen dearth
Humans become sick if they only eat green vegetables. Likewise, bees don’t thrive if they lack a protein-rich diet. Brood is cannibalised if there is a shortage of pollen.
Bees cannot detect pollen's protein value but judge it by its lipid content, so they respond to a protein deficiency by increased foraging. The quality as well as the quantity of pollen matters. For example, they cannot depend on dandelion pollen because it does not contain all the essential amino acids.
So, how can you tell there is a pollen deficiency? I can tell you when there isn’t a problem. If they are bringing in plenty of pollen of various hues, there is surplus pollen around the brood nest, and the colony is rearing drones. Additionally, if the colony is expanding nicely, and they don’t bother with pollen patties, they must be okay.
Commercial pollen mixtures contain about 2% pollen, brewer’s yeast, soya, etc. Supplements should contain at least 50% sugar.
Making a DIY pollen supplement requires strong muscles or a food processor with a dough hook. Ultra bee can be used as the pollen component. There is no consensus regarding the best recipe. David Cramp (A Practical Manual of Beekeeping, 1988), suggests one part sodium Caseinate, two parts non-active yeast, and enough sugar syrup to make a stiff paste. Make sure there is no sign of fermentation before use.
The supplements must be placed close to the brood nest to be effective in cool weather. Pollen supplements in autumn or spring may stimulate colony growth more than syrup. Continue spring feeding until they bring in pollen.
Rusty Burlew: feeding pollen — detail
Autumn is generally the wrong time to feed pollen, as it stimulates brood rearing. Every rule is made to be broken. I did so when a colony didn’t have many winter bees. It worked a treat.
Commercial pollen substitutes are available. But if you need loads, the best plan is to use a pollen trap and make a DIY formulation. Pollen rapidly goes mouldy, so collect and freeze it every few days.
Honey
Feeding pollen and honey
The upper picture shows orange pollen. Honey stores in young comb look whitish, but those in old comb take on the colour of the frame. Honey in dark frames becomes viscous, and the cell walls seem thick. Humans find them tough to uncap, so bees must feel the same way.
Honey syrup:
To prevent disease transmission, honey should only be fed to the colony that produced it. Likewise, never feed them bought honey. To give honey for spring or summer feeding, dilute it to a 1:1 or 2:1 solution. If you waft it around the apiary, they will go berserk and start robbing.
“Bringing Honey Down”: In the autumn, encourage bees to move stores from the supers to the brood nest. To achieve this, honeycombs are scored and put above the crown board. Every cell capping in the comb must be disrupted.
Nadiring This useful technique is used by some and is unnecessary for everyone. In the early autumn, a super box containing stores is placed under the brood box and left there until spring. The bees:
Rapidly draw stores up to the brood nest. It is not necessary to uncap the honeycombs.
The brood nest may sink into it.
It is supposed that it may reduce drafts.
The super will be free of stores and ready to use in the spring.
The entrance becomes more difficult to defend.
Fondant
To feed bakers fondant after the honey harvest, make a hole in the undersurface of one or two 12 kg bags. Place the packets over the aperture(s) in the crown board or directly on the frames. Push a pencil through the fondant to check that the hole in the packet is over the hole in the crown board. Bees depend on background humidity to moisturise sugar fondant and make it edible. Fondant is available from cake-stuff, among others.
Be sure you remove the remains of the fondant and eke before the onset of winter, otherwise, it will cause dampness.
A colony will use fondant and honey to build up in the spring. After this, concentrated sugar is regarded as capital and will not be used for feeding brood apart from in an emergency.
Chunks of fondant can be wrapped in cling film. But bees munch the plastic. I once saw a couple of bees doing a coordinated flight, carrying a piece away. I have never seen any deposited outside the hives. Brown (biodegradable) cooking parchment oiled inside and out does not prevent baker’s fondant from drying out, but it does work for commercial pollen supplements.
I’ve heard that autumn feeding using sugar solution can cramp the brood nest, whereas fondant doesn’t.
If you worry that bees in poly hives lack water in the winter, recall that the products of aerobic respiration are such that metabolising one molecule of glucose results in 6 molecules of water. Moreover, an insect’s cuticle makes them resistant to desiccation.
A simple method for giving granular sugar is to dunk a packet of sugar in water until it's saturated, then gently squeeze out some of the excess.
Special bee fondant and syrup
Apipasta (from Spain), Fondabee (Belgium), Ambrosia (international company – probably Belgium), HiveAlive fondant (Ireland)
These consist of glucose and fructose.
Inverted sugar preparations are sold on the basis that they save bees work. I’m not so sure about that, but they do have other advantages. An inverted fondant is slow to form a crust, and a crust makes it difficult for the bees to assimilate the sugar. Syrup does not ferment and can be stored long term in an airtight container.
Carbon footprint
Honey — The most eco-friendly autumn feeding option. Leave enough stores for the bees.
British sugar — the CO2 footprint of sugar beet is 600 grams/kg. However, in principle, you might want to avoid this since sugar-beet seeds are often coated with Neonicotinoids, pesticides that are toxic to bees.
Cane sugar has a smaller footprint of 300–400 grams CO2 eq/kg.
“Special” fondant containing fructose and glucose. It is not manufactured in the UK and has a long journey to get here. For example, Apipasta, imported from Spain (a 1300-mile road trip to England), produces at least 270 grams CO2/kg.
Moreover, to make this fondant, sugar has to be diluted, inverted, and warmed to evaporate most of the water.
If we paid for the consequences of sugar production, it would be realistically priced (and make commercial beekeeping problematic). So think again when you reach for that cheap bag of sugar!
A wild pollinator has a zero-carbon footprint. This one has its head in a nepeta flower. It was working the plant with several sisters all bombing around, so it was a fluke that I managed to take a snap. I love the way her leg is steadying her.
When to Feed Sugar
Feeding fondant using
DIY crown board.
Fondant as seen through translucent cover
Fondant on board
Insulation above board (polystyrene wrapped in tin foil)
Feeding on crown board
Nucleus hives
When you make up a nuc, give it some stores. After two or three days, it is safe to give syrup.
After extraction
Plenty of honey remains in the combs after spinning. If these are hung in a box at the top of the hive, separated from the rest of the hive by a small aperture, the bees move the honey down to their brood/super boxes. A lot of honey being wafted around excites the bees, so this is best done at dusk. If the combs are left in the hive for too long, the bees fill them with nectar. Unwanted honeycomb, like honey in dark combs, can be returned to the bees using this method, but first, all the cells must be uncapped.
Starvation
Spring — stimulative
Low on stores — anytime
Autumn — for winter
Comb replacement
Starvation
If you are an excellent beekeeper, your bees will never starve.
It is essential to appreciate that stores can get low at any time. At the height of summer, a standard colony needs one or two frames to survive a week, a truly massive one up to 0.45 kg/day. Act immediately if you find a colony without stores with bees looking groggy, weakly clinging to the combs and with a lot on the floorboard. Spray them with a tepid 50:50 sugar solution. The bees will rapidly revive.
Suppose the bees are running out of stores in late winter/spring; feed them fondant.
Stimulation, e.g. spring
Spring feeding (March) aims to maximise the workforce to take advantage of spring flowers like Oil Seed Rape (OSR). However, if the weather in March is too cold, they will be unable to deal with the water in the syrup. An alternative is to give pollen supplements. But most people feed syrup, and it works.
In rural areas, only a few flowers produce nectar in early to mid-June. This is called the “June gap”. It does not happen yearly, but when it does, the hives may become devoid of stores and the queen stops laying.
A top feeder or contact feeder is suitable for stimulative feeding.
Autumn - for winter stores
Autumn feeding is started in mid-September in Southern England. However, this gives small colonies little time. Feeding should be constant, which means frequent trips to the apiary.
There are two ways to determine how much sugar to feed in the autumn. Calculate how much they need, or give it to them until they stop taking it.
Estimate it by eye-balling the frames
A plastic medium contains about 1.8 kg (ca. 4 lb) of honey, National supers 1.2–1.36 kg (3 lb), and National Deeps 2.3 kg (5 lb). Depending on the character of your bees, they require 15–24 kg of stores (35-53 lb). Judge the weight of each frame. Since honey is 18-20% water, it is possible to determine how much feed they require.
If you have a hard-level surface like a large paving slab, weigh the boxes using bathroom scales
Regular weighing allows you to check on progress quickly. For example, with mediums, allow about 5.3 kg of non-sugar weight: One box weighs 1.4 kg, waxed frames are 10 × 0.29 kg, and the bees could weigh another kg.
Current weight of honey and nectar in box: (w1) = weight on scale - body weight (w2) - 5.3 kg
Sucrose needed = 24 kg - (w1) x 0.8
This example suggests that a medium box with all (plastic) frames full of stores weighs 24 kg, of which 18 kg is honey.
A colony that has sufficient winter stores is difficult to lift. It feels “screwed” to the hive stand. This lifting is referred to as hefting. Heft both sides occasionally to see if the hive is “light”. It is problematic with my sort of tall hive stand, as the hives are prone to stick to and lift with the hive.
Winter worry
There is usually worrying talk about starvation in the winter and spring. To remain immune, you must ensure a moderately prolific colony has a minimum of 18 kg of stores, preferably more. The disadvantage of giving more (e.g., three boxes) is that residual, scattered stores prevent them from forming a compact brood nest in the spring. Once the foragers bring in nectar, they dump it anywhere, and life gets messy. Inspections become difficult, and they swarm early. So, if you can, move frames to the edge of the brood boxes or remove as many honeycombs as prudent and replace them with drawn comb.
If they need help in cool spring weather, feed them fondant. I often put my Crown Board on my poly hives in position in the autumn, ready to use should the bees require some in the spring. However, with this arrangement, the bees cannot access it if the temperature is below 4 °C. With a mild climate, this is rarely an issue. Bees cluster under the crown board in a wooden hive, making the fondant accessible. Poly hive frame feeders can be used right side up or down, to feed fondant.
There is a tradition of giving bees 1 kg of fondant for Christmas. However, 1 kg will be thoroughly inadequate if they run out of stores.
Prevention of Fermentation and Mould
Many beekeepers don’t bother with this, perhaps because it is not inconvenient for them to give small amounts of feed frequently, and the kitchen sink is close by. I find it invaluable.
Thymol
Thymol may have a beneficial effect against nosema. It works well to prevent fermentation and scum so long as it is used with every feed. It can be prepared with:
Surgical Spirit. This comprises 95% ethanol (booze) methyl salicylate 0.5% +. Excipients Diethyl Phthalate and Virgin Castor Oil. Some express concern that Surgical Spirit contains these substances. The risk of a Bhopal disaster is small.
Isopropyl alcohol, 99.99%.
Thymol can be emulsified. This gives the bees an equal dose and gets thymol into winter honey stores to alleviate nosema. However, it is not a validated or authorised treatment.
White Spirit is entirely different from Surgical Spirit because it contains various hydrocarbons, including nasties like benzene.
Make-up stock solutions
Use twenty grams of thymol crystals with 100ml of 99.99% isopropyl alcohol or surgical spirit. To dissolve the thymol, warm the mixture in a hot water bath. Shake the mix before every use.
Examples of concentrations using surgical spirit
Thymol strong: 5ml per (UK) gallon (4.5 litres) — in common usage
Thymol medium: 5ml per 13.5 litres. (David Cushman and Wynne Jones)
Thymol thin: 5ml per 15 litres (Ron Brown).
Emulsified Thymol: DIY option
Isopropyl alcohol
1 ml per litre
Sterilisation using heat
Warm the sugar solution to 68 °C for one minute. The solution will be good for 7–10 days unless the feeder already contains yeast.
Inverted sugar syrup
Because it is high in fructose (more soluble than sucrose), inverted sugar has a high osmotic concentration (like jam), so it does not go mouldy.
Sterilisation using bleach
I tried this as Randy Oliver has used it to good effect. It makes the syrup smell like a public urinal.
Next: all about honey
Page BK 7.