Winter Candy Board for a Warré Hive

The one thing I like about a vertical hive system is the options it gives you, but "options" means additional equipment which can present a storage space problem. If you're someone who appreciates buying something when it's on sale, with a coupon, using a card that gives cash back then you'll like this piece of equipment.

In the summer, I use a 3/4" wood rim as an Imirie shim. In the Fall, I attach 1/2-inch hardware cloth to it and use it as a comb-crushing screen for strained honey. Today this piece of equipment is being converted into a Winter Candy Board. The candy will be placed above the super (under the quilt), to provide emergency food should the bees eat all their honey. My preference is to have the hive winterized (i.e.: stocked with emergency food and wrapped) by Halloween, but a candy board like this can be slipped into the hive very quickly any time during the Winter.

No-cook Candy Board

No-Cook Candy Recipe: combine 3# sugar, 1/4 cup mineral salt (optional), 6 T. cold water, and 1/2 t. vinegar (optional). You may also add a few drops of anise essential oil to stimulate the bees' appetite.

If the cluster has moved to the top of the hive, the sugar provides both insulation and moisture wicking directly above the cluster. These properties play as big a role in the bees' Winter survival as food stores. The 3/8" hole on the side of the rim provides a very small amount of ventilation and is (technically) big enough for the bees to use as an exit/entrance if necessary. It'll take only one dead bee to clog that size hole so if you're looking to provide your bees with an upper entrance, you might want to drill a couple-a-few (as they say in CO) holes for them.

Whoops

So I'm looking out the window, staring at the snow-covered beehive, wondering if the little cluster of bees is warm and moving about, or if they're freezing and starving with food right over their heads. And then it occurs to me... there ISN'T food right over their heads.

When I checked their food supply this weekend, I noted they'd eaten an area clean. "That must be where the brood nest is," I said to myself. "Three bars." And I closed up the hive. I should've pushed some chunks of fondant over. Bees need to be "in contact" with their food in Winter, so let's just hope this isn't a Lesson Learned.

Recipe: Fondant for Winter Feeding

This is a good workable amount for a 3-quart pot:
  4 lbs. granulated sugar (white)
  1 lb. water
  1 tsp. lemon juice or Apple Cider Vinegar (optional but the acid assists in keeping the sugar inverted)

Hopefully your hives aren't "light" and don't need to be fed, but if you had to feed heavy syrup in the Fall, then Winter feeding might be necessary as well. Syrup has moisture than can be a death sentence for the bees in Winter, so candy or fondant is a much wiser choice. A no-cook candy board is far easier to make but if you're inclined you might want to make fondant, which some say is easier for the bees to digest.

Certainly, you can buy fondant at Cake Crafts but it's got additives in it that can give bees dysentery. It's better to make your own. Making fondant involves inverting sugar, breaking the disaccharide sucrose into the monosaccharides fructose and glucose, and then controlling the molecular alignment of those simple sugars. Inverted sugar is supposedly more easily digested by the bees, and in the Winter you want to keep things easy for them. There are lots of recipes on the Internet for winter bee feed. Really old ones call for cream of tartar but I'd avoid that additive. Other than than, forget about the ingredients and the measurements; it's the method that matters most when making fondant. And don't  worry about fancy equipment either; all you need is a little patience and a watchful eye.

fondant