Sugar water can provide valuable food sources to your bees during times of starvation; however, they must only drink in moderation as too much moisture could contaminate their hive and pose a potential threat to them.
To avoid this situation, always feed on warm days using a rapid feeder – an upright container fitted with risers featuring six to eight small holes drilled or punched through it for feeding from above your top box frames.
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Feeding in the Fall
Your beehives will require moisture during winter, especially if they don’t produce enough honey for themselves to store up. While many of the same principles that apply when feeding sugar water for fall also apply when winter feeding, there are a few variations:
Most beekeepers opt for a 1:1 mix of sugar syrup and water as this should provide sufficient food sources to feed colonies with limited stores over winter.
Some beekeepers utilise a thicker syrup composed of 2:1 sugar:water ratio for supplementing their hives with enough stores for winter.
Other beekeepers will make candy boards or fondant for winter feedings, requiring specific recipes and time spent in the kitchen, but providing an alternative to liquid winter feed. Candy boards or fondant can be especially beneficial to newly installed beehives as they stimulate wax production necessary for comb building – helping their bees get off to an effective start during Winter/Spring.
Feeding in the Winter
Feeding during winter helps ensure hives have enough food stored to provide an emergency food source when nectar flows end in fall. Start this supplemental feeding 6 weeks prior to beginning cold weather conditions in your area.
Sugar syrup is an artificial nectar used to encourage bees to draw comb, rear brood and supplement poor honey flows. Different mixes may be required depending on the season; during winter a one-two mix provides both sugar and pollen to the bees.
At cold temperatures, syrup cannot evaporate due to moisture being drawn from the cold air and condensing onto its surface as dew. Therefore fondant or solid sugar are more suitable emergency winter feed options; these can be made by mixing and heating sugar with water until a paste forms that can then be placed above clustered bees so that its content gradually dissipates through their own moisture.
Feeding in the Spring
Beekeepers typically feed a syrup mix to their colony during spring to help it build more comb real estate and draw out frames, which is useful if they depleted their natural stores before winter, or to prepare them for Summer nectar flows.
However, feeding liquid sugar during late winter or early Spring can be challenging due to low moisture retention levels in cold air environments compared to hot environments – bees will usually disregard it until temperatures spike significantly and start consuming it as nectar!
If you do attempt to feed during winter months it’s essential that a thicker syrup mix and being away from your hive are used, to prevent too much moisture entering and leading to condensation issues – this can have the potentially disastrous effect of losing their essential heat source that keeps their survival.
Feeding in the Summer
Early spring warm days can bring bees out of hibernation early and they may consume all their stored honey and pollen before the bloom starts. A supplementary feed of sugar syrup may assist them during this transition period and start brood production before pollen is available.
Replacing nectar with white granulated sugar dissolved in water is the most commonly employed approach for beehives to replace lost nectar. Different ratios are employed depending on the season; boiling of this solution would cause it to dissipate in cold air before reaching beehives and therefore will likely evaporate before reaching them.
Winter conditions require the bees to store their honey in thick 2:1 syrups that they can easily store into their comb. You can create this solution in either a feeder or by filling sugar cakes or pollen patties placed atop the hive.
