Easy soft fondant recipe

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Ok, just playing devil's advocate here: what if you keep some honey from each hive and set it aside to be used for this? So if you have 4 hives you'd keep 4 jars of honey, one for each hive to feed back to the hive in case it's needed.
Wouldn't advocate this for commercial keepers as it would be a nightmare to manage, but for a hobbyist?
Once you're over the winter, if you have honey left over in these jars, you just use it for yourself and refill the jars with fresh honey for the next winter at harvest time.

I suppose it's be a hassle to extract, to keep honey for these jars separate from each hive, as I said, just playing devil's advocate...

The question is 'but why?' all that faff and how are you going to feed it back? you really need your 'emergency' supply to be right on the bees so they just need to move onto it and take it down. also, you don't really know how much you need.And believe it or not - honey in that state is not the best thing to feed back to them at this stage, not to mention the fact, if it warms up a bit you could trigger robbing. Fondant is a no brainer really
 
The question is 'but why?' all that faff and how are you going to feed it back? you really need your 'emergency' supply to be right on the bees so they just need to move onto it and take it down. also, you don't really know how much you need.And believe it or not - honey in that state is not the best thing to feed back to them at this stage, not to mention the fact, if it warms up a bit you could trigger robbing. Fondant is a no brainer really

As I said, just playing devil's advocate, not actually suggesting anyone should do it.
 
I know - reply was meant in the same spirit :)

Fair enough.
Well, the proper explanation is that I like to push the hypotheticals to better understand what is being discussed. In this case the feeding of honey mixed with sugar to make a thick paste was put down as a suggestion because of the possibility of cross-contamination, which is a very fair point.
To find other reasons not to use the honey paste, and better understand the issue, I eliminated the threat of cross-contamination by making available to the bees their own honey, extracted from their own hive.

A theoretical exercise, if you will, to better explore and understand the issue of feeding bees and why some things are a good idea and why others are a bad idea.
 
Hi Zante

it is possible to do as you said but the honey would need to be heated for the sugar to dissolve or you grind the sugar down into fine crystals for it then to be mixed in so no diff to using sugar, glucose and water.

there is also the cost case. if you sell your honey then you sell for more that you buy sugar for so it wouldn't stack up that way either. Sugar is 39p per kg in Aldi at the moment where as I sell my honey at £16 per kg retail to me that's a no brainer.
 
"all the anti-caking additives they put into icing sugar for a start"

Fair point. My box of icing sugar is 97% sugar, 3% maize starch. When I google, I find Michael Bush explaining that bees can't digest the starch. I suppose this is why I see suggestions to grind down granulated sugar to use as a feed.
 

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