Feeding fondant with a super on?

[Steven Hart]

Hello,

Sorry, this may sound like a newbie question. Is it ok to feed fondant to a hive that has a super on? Since the weather turned cold I've not inspected either of my hives for 3 weeks now. Another beekeper said they may be light on stores and suggested feeding them fondant.

Steven

 

[tonybloke]

is there a queen excluder in place?

 

[FreeFall]

is there a queen excluder in place?

Could you please expand on that Tony? Sorry to jump in on this thread but I guess the OP might benefit from the answer too.

I had a check on stores on Monday and there was very little honey, so put on 1:1 today in a contact feeder - I'd previously given a super after the warm March spell created a lot of brood and queen cups were being drawn. I'm on brood + half (dammit) so configuration looks like this (WBC):

Roof
Feeder in empty lift + insulation
Feeder board
Super + foundation/drawn comb
Queen Excluder
Shallow brood box
Deep brood box
Floor

Is there a problem with the QX being there? The only thing I can think of right now is that the drones can't reach the feeder.


Nick

 

[Polyanwood]

Yes if the hive is low on stores you should feed. I wouldn't feed with a super on as I don't want to adulterate my honey. Most beeks feed 1:1 sugar syrup in the Spring, as this takes less work for them to use. If they are hungry fondant is better than nothing.


Drones do not feed themselves, they are fed, so it doesn't matter that they can't get to the feeder.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I think Tonybloke may be alluding to the possibility of the queen getting isolated and chilled whilst the colony moves to the food in the super - I would have thought it would be ok - your colony should be big enough for this not to happen and it would have to get really cold for the bees to go into a tight cluster anyway

 

[tonybloke]

is there a queen excluder in place?

if there is, you can swap the boxes round, before any more feeding, and feed the bees in the brood box, not the super.
swap around again if/when the weather and forage improves

 

[Polyanwood]

Then not only will it be easier for them to get to, but also you are much less likely to end up with sugar in your supers.

 

[VEG]

feed with fondant and leave the super for them dont extract it

 

[FreeFall]

if there is, you can swap the boxes round, before any more feeding, and feed the bees in the brood box, not the super.
swap around again if/when the weather and forage improves

What a great idea. That never occurred to me and I've been wondering if I should get the bees out of the super somehow, and take it off to prevent sugar being stored there. In the end I figured that if there were any stores there once I'd finished feeding and a flow started, I'd keep the stores for later and put on a fresh super. So it should go like this, correct?

Roof
Feeder in empty lift + insulation
Feeder board
Shallow brood box
Deep brood box
Queen Excluder
Super + foundation/drawn comb
Floor

Thanks!

Nick.

 

[oliver90owner]

I would not leave a Q/E below the brood. Just put the shallow below the deep brood, if they need the space.

Unfortunate if she lays in it, but not the end of the world - they may well have swarmed, had she not, and needed the extra space. Three weeks above the excluder and it will be used for honey.

Swap back as soon as the weather improves. It is not as though you have twenty, or a hundred, colonies to do...

IF the weather forecasts are correct, that may not be until the end of the month. Then again, the forecasters have been so far adrift this last year that things could change for the better next week. Do what would be best to get the bees through this bad patch; That is warmth and food, mostly.

RAB

 

[FreeFall]

I would not leave a Q/E below the brood.

Thanks for that. It was a copy/paste error on my part actually - I would leave out the QE as well, otherwise there may be some very unhappy drones about!

 

[tkwinston4]

I didn't think they stored fondant but just used it when they want food i.e. nip out to the local fondant shop to get some munchies when they feel peckish?

 

[goodbobby]

I would not leave a Q/E below the brood. Just put the shallow below the deep brood, if they need the space.

Unfortunate if she lays in it, but not the end of the world - they may well have swarmed, had she not, and needed the extra space. Three weeks above the excluder and it will be used for honey.

Swap back as soon as the weather improves. It is not as though you have twenty, or a hundred, colonies to do...

IF the weather forecasts are correct, that may not be until the end of the month. Then again, the forecasters have been so far adrift this last year that things could change for the better next week. Do what would be best to get the bees through this bad patch; That is warmth and food, mostly.

RAB

I have been scratching my head about a couple of paragraphs in the recent Haynes Bee Manual[HBM] (Claire and Adrian Waring) which may have some relevance to this

"Removing supers may leave a colony with no food stores and a spell of poor summer weather may lead to starvation. If you feed syrup over empty supers on the hive they might store this in the supers. If you then extract these, could you claim to be selling honey? You could make candy and feed it to them but a simpler solution is to offer them granulated sugar in it's bag.

Make a hole in the side of the bag of sugar to give the bees access. Left like this, the bees are likely to carry many of the sugar grains out of the hive. The trick is to wet the sugar. You want the crystals to stick together so that the bees drink the sugary water rather than remove the crystals. Submerge the bag in a contained of water until the sugar is wet, you can do this at the hive. Then place the bag on the inner cover with the hole near the feed hole. Add the usual super and roof the prevent robbing.

This is like us living on a diet of porridge. You wouldn't starve but you wouldn't look forward to dinner. However, the colony will be able to keep ticking over and won't die of starvation."

So could one simply (1) put a feeder crown board on top of the brood box (2) top with a with a 2" eke (3) insert a wet bag of sugar and replace supers and roof? This according to my reading of HBM would create a temporary stores reserve, obviate the need to move the supers under the BB and run the risk of the queen laying in these/risk sugar solution being stored in these.

 

[Travelator]

I think a bag of sugar that has been dunked in water is functionally equivalent to fondant for the purposes of this discussion.
Why choose one over the other? Fondant is easier to work with in some ways, but bagged sugar is easy to get hold of in an emergency.

 

[oliver90owner]

Goodbobby,

It most certainly is not summer! You appear to have missed the last part of the last sentence. "That is warmth and food, mostly.

Summer weather can be 'poor' but it is not as cold as we are getting now. You do what you want to do. I will do what is the best for the bees under the present circumstances.

 

[goodbobby]

Goodbobby,

It most certainly is not summer! You appear to have missed the last part of the last sentence. "That is warmth and food, mostly.

Summer weather can be 'poor' but it is not as cold as we are getting now. You do what you want to do. I will do what is the best for the bees under the present circumstances.

Hi RAB, I have just looked at my missive and I have appear to have quoted your post in full ? ....However, more importantly, I very much value your and the other experienced posters views and was purely trying to ascertain/ clarify the Haynes Bee manual's authors woolly statement that the "product" of a soaked sugar bag would not be stored in any existing supers as sugar syrup, if they were left on the hive during emergency feeding.

My 3 main colonies were bringing in nectar well in between the downpours until Tuesday last. However an inspection on that day seemed to indicate that they were now marking time and the existing super contents would likely be consumed in the short term if the weather did not cheer up. Added to this obtaining fondant locally is a nightmare time-wise. Many of our local bakers don't even carry it any more! So the sugar bag idea, if valid, would work as a temporary measure for me at my out-apiary.

 

[Travelator]

Regarding the question of whether bees do or don't move fondant and store it in comb, I'm pretty sure I *have* seen fondant being stored in the brood nest - I saw patches of cells at the outside of the nest half-filled with something snowy white. There are a couple of other possible explanations for what I saw, though:

- Some kind of white mould or fungal growth (hope not!)
- Bees using a thin layer of fondant to seal cells full of pollen (so not actually storing meaningful quantities of fondant)

 

[BeeJayBee]

So the sugar bag idea, if valid, would work as a temporary measure for me at my out-apiary.

If you can carry a bag of sugar and some water to moisten it, would it be better to use it to make some syrup on site? The bees can use that without going out to fetch water.

 

[oliver90owner]

Let's clear up a few loose ends.

If there is honey in the super they are not exactly starving at that time. There is normlly some feed in the honey arch as well.

Weather can 'cheer up' for a day; this may allow a few more days before they become critical re stores - the beekeeper is there to take appropriate action. A couple of warm days on OSR can turn them round for a week or more. I don't know when this weather spell will end any better or worse than the forecasters. That is the way I feel of their ability to give out reliable information. Close to useless.

Empty space (supers) above a brood nest is not a good situation in this weather after the length of the cold period we have experienced recently; especially for smaller colonies.

Emergency feeding will, by definition, not be stored. When the 'emergency' is no longer applicable, that is a different ball game. So they have been careful in how they worded that statement? It means exactly what it says.

Haynes authors are not considering this unprecedented (in living memory) topsy turvy spring weather pattern. Further, I reiterate, it is not summer by any means.

Sometimes one needs to think for oneself.

 

[Hombre]

Any honey that was in the supers in March is long gone now and provided you are careful with the amount of stores you feed, you should keep the bees safe and while they will store syrup in the brood nest, it is unlikely that any syrup given now, in moderation, will make it to the supers.

One eye on available supplies and one on the weather. Take care folks.

The technique of giving candy (dampened bag of sugar) used to be prevalent fifteen years ago. I don't know when fondant started to become the popular choice, perhaps someone can advise the history of candy or fondant feeding for over winter.

As RAB points out, the current conditions are fairly unprecedented and so are not directly represented in the standard textbooks. Stand by your beds for the June gap . . .

We live in interesting times.