Honey from fondant ??

[wibble]

Just starting my second year and both my poyhives have survied the winter so far. One of the hives is samller than the other as it was a swarm from the larger last year. The larger is teeming with bees who are very active and bringing in shed loads of pollen. I have put on an eek and fondant end of Jan "just in case" on both hives. The smaller colony went for it but the larger completely ignored it till mid-feburary. They then went "mad" and built up wild comb from the top of the frames to the crown board (which is clear so I get a good view of what they are doing) about 3-4 inches heigh in the space of week. All the fondant is gone. Added more fondant, quick peek yesterday through the crown board and in all the wild comb upper cells there appears to be a honey coloured substance. Fondant all gone again. My question is this :

1) Are they realy taking fondant and converting it to Honey ?

2) Have they found some abundant nectar source ? If so why take the fondant ?

Do I remove all the wild comb and give them a super to work on instead ? At the rate they are building comb they will have drawn that out in a couple of weeks.

It just seems a waste of their time & effort to build & store only for me to eventaully remove it when I need to take the eek off.



And now the smaller colony is building wild comb too.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Do they need feeding?
Bees will store fondant if they have somewhere to put it so maybe stop feeding them and re-appraise the situation in a week.
If the weather warms up enough for you to have a quick look....not an inspection, just a look at stores then I might do that

 

[Davelin]

Just a suggestion on feeding fondant; I put it in a plastic takeaway container inverted over feed hole in the crown board. No need for an eke then and no room to build all that brace comb.

 

[pargyle]

Just a suggestion on feeding fondant; I put it in a plastic takeaway container inverted over feed hole in the crown board. No need for an eke then and no room to build all that brace comb.

That's good advice - give bees anything more than bee space at the top of the hive and they will nearly always build brace comb down from the crownboard to the tops of the frames ... real messy job to remove it if they have filled it with nectar, not to mention the disruption to the bees and the waste of all that energy. If you do need use an eke to put some fondant on top of the frames just make it about 10mm deep not 3 or 4 inches and roll the fondant out into a flat sheet, wrap it in cling film and put a few slashes with a knife on the underside so they can get at it.

 

[enrico]

Sounds to me like they don't need feeding any more. They will store it and you will end up with sugar in your honey which is not what you want. The art is for them to be using the last of their stores as the nectar starts flowing. They will NOT turn fondant into honey they will leave it as fondant. Very different things
E

 

[wibble]

hummm. Ok, will leave fondant off for a bit & see how they do. I have to use an eek as there is top bee space in the poly hives.

 

[enrico]

Fill the eek with insulation and cut a hole big enough to take a nice slab of fondant. Or make a taller eek and cut a hole big enough for a tub of fondant to sit in nicely. Sometimes you have to try and outthink the bees!

 

[pargyle]

Or make a taller eek and cut a hole big enough for a tub of fondant to sit in nicely. !

Or just use an empty super with insulation over the top of the tub of fondant ....

 

[Beefriendly]

They will NOT turn fondant into honey they will leave it as fondant. Very different things
E

I knew I should have taken a picture.....My bees have just filled the empty space of the fondant bag with new comb filled with honey. I can only assume they converted the fondant as no nectar around at the moment.

 

[Nige.Coll]

How heavy is the hive ?

They will store fondant but I'm not sure they can make honey out of it. It would need a lot of water for them to do so.

 

[Beefriendly]

How heavy is the hive ?

They will store fondant but I'm not sure they can make honey out of it. It would need a lot of water for them to do so.

It hefted light and hence the fondant. Overkill as plenty of scattered stores and a few full frames still left. Not sure why they couldn't make sugar honey, they need to dilute it with water to 50% solution to use as food in the first place, so if more than they need they could go on to store it. They certainly made some wax thta was filled with clear sticky liquid. Of course they could just have re-arranged stores, but that wouldn't be my first guess.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

It hefted light and hence the fondant. Overkill as plenty of scattered stores and a few full frames still left. Not sure why they couldn't make sugar honey, they need to dilute it with water to 50% solution to use as food in the first place, so if more than they need they could go on to store it. They certainly made some wax thta was filled with clear sticky liquid. Of course they could just have re-arranged stores, but that wouldn't be my first guess.

They might store liquefied fondant but honey it ain't

 

[Beefriendly]

They might store liquefied fondant but honey it ain't

Which why I differentiated it from the real stuff by calling it "sugar honey".