Starvation is one of the main factors contributing to bee hive loss during wintertime, so providing your colony with a candy board or sugar feeder may help them.
This easy feeding system can be particularly effective for colonies that lack stored food during fall and winter months. Simply install it inside your hive above its inner cover.
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How to Make a Candy Board
Candy boards can be assembled using various methods. While some recipes require special ingredients and may become complicated over time, others are simple enough for anyone to craft one quickly and affordably.
This recipe for creating a simple syrup board is fast, simple, and economical. Made from materials you likely already have around your hive – like old hive bodies or bee super boxes with dimensions suitable as shims – this DIY board requires minimal assembly effort.
Shims with ventilation holes drilled on their front sides help prevent condensation that could otherwise lead to wet bees dying due to mold and mildew growth inside their hive.
No-cook candy boards provide an alternative approach for colonies in need of winter honey storage assistance, providing insurance against stored honey running out and depletion during colder winter conditions. They should be added post winter solstice but before spring build-up begins. They may also be combined with winter blend or winter patties made specifically to combat such situations.
Ingredients
Sugar syrup and some form of food for bees are essential ingredients of a candy board, with various recipes using soft or hard candy as components of it. Although intended as supplementations to honey stores for wintertime consumption, candy boards should not replace honey stored by bees but serve more as food sources than replacements.
At temperatures that consistently fall below 50 degrees, beekeepers should place a candy board above the bee cluster in their hive during daytime temperatures that consistently remain under 50. Insulated on one side and covered with sugar syrup on the other, the candy board allows bees to consume sugar as needed by their bodies.
Candy board insulation prevents moisture accumulation in hives during winter. Condensation poses serious danger to bees during this season and can lead to mold and mildew growth; condensation also dampens bee clusters and causes them to become cold and stressed, further straining their bodies.
Storage
Candy boards are forms that are attached to the top of beehives in order to store sugar-rich mixtures that bees can access during winter for food storage purposes. Beekeepers can purchase ready-made versions or make their own using old frames from beehive bodies or supers as candy board shims.
Beekeepers use candy boards as an emergency feed source in case their colonies cannot store enough honey to sustain themselves through Winter. Candy boards can also be combined with pollen patties or other low-protein winter feedings for optimal colony nutrition.
While winter patties or candy boards should only be used when absolutely necessary, having some on hand in case your hives don’t store enough honey is wise to ensure survival through winter. Just keep in mind that they shouldn’t replace what has already been stored!
Maintenance
Candy boards provide extra sugar for bees during winter. Though not essential to maintaining healthy colony with ample honey stores, a candy board can serve as an emergency food source or help prevent moisture build-up that could cause mold and mildew build-up within their hive.
Candy boards provide bees with access to food during warmish winter days when they break cluster to take cleansing flights and feed, and also help prevent moisture build-up by absorbing most of the condensation created from warm bees that otherwise would drop back onto their cluster.
Our Winter-Bee-Kind Candy Board insulates, provides upper ventilation, and comes loaded with both sugar and pollen to encourage foraging by your bees during wintertime.
