Candy boards (or sugar fondant) are a simple beekeeping project designed to aid your colony during an especially long Winter. Although some recipes for candy may become complex, it doesn’t have to be.
Combine dry sugar and water until the consistency resembles damp dough, then transfer to a candy board frame lined with paper bowling or newspaper, if desired, and secured with hardware cloth.
Contents
Bees Eat It
Candy boards are used to supplement winter bee food supply. Often shaped like a shallow super with an opening in front, typically made of wood and wire mesh, you can purchase or make these yourself. While recipes for sugar syrup vary greatly – from complex ones such as those found on Southeastern Indiana Beekeepers Association websites to quick ones like this simple one from Southeastern Indiana Beekeepers Association’s, all that’s required to get started are frame with 2 to 3 inch wire mesh height and wood shim with 1/2-inch hole at its center – plus frames with 2 to 3 inch wire mesh height as well as frames with 2 to 3 inch height wire mesh height as well as wood shim with 1/2-inch hole at its center.
For wintertime beehive management, place the feeder directly above the topmost box with its opening facing forward and add an insulation blanket below for extra insulation. Check it every three weeks to make sure bees are eating from it; colonies with abundant honey stores might use it slowly while those near starvation might devour it within several weeks.
Bees Like It
Candy boards are simple one-piece feeders designed to offer food, ventilation, and insulation for bees during wintertime. Plus they help keep your hive cleaner by eliminating mouse-attracting lower entrances!
Beekeepers often craft their own candy boards for use with frame hives; however, commercially available ones are also readily available at a reasonable cost. When choosing one to suit your hive and drilling a hole for access purposes in its front, it should fit properly and offer adequate access.
Sugar syrup used in candy boards must be cooked to soft-ball stage; beware not to overdo it as too warm temperatures will cause too much sugar to migrate out of the candy and stay in its hive, leading to mildew growth and possible mildew outbreak. Some recipes incorporate vinegar as an antimicrobial measure if sugar remains inside a beehive for too long.
Timing your candy board installation depends on whether your bees have low supplies. If they do, the optimal time would be November before cold weather really sets in.
Bees Need It
Candy boards can be an ideal solution if your hive has low honey stores and needs to replenish its reserves, or as a one-off feeding solution at the onset of winter.
Sugar in a candy board provides temporary replacement nutrients to replace those normally obtained through water, pollen and nectar sources for bees. This can speed up normal colony processes like comb building and brood rearing as well as increase their health and productivity.
Healthy, strong colonies that have enough stored honey may not require supplementing their stores with an artificial feeding solution, but for weak or stressed colonies it could make all the difference in survival or death. It can also be an ideal option if swarms arrive late summer/fall without enough stores to see them through winter.
Bees Will Eat It
A candy board is an effective and cost-efficient way to help your bees survive winter by feeding themselves. Constructed out of wood, wire and sugar, this device insulates, ventilates and allows an upper entrance for bees entering or leaving their hive while also controlling moisture build-up and condensation during this colder period.
Bees need help during winter to conserve their limited food stores and sustain themselves until spring when production can resume. Additional feeding may be required until then.
Cooked sugar can be dangerous to bees. To reduce mold growth and promote quick sugar crystallization, this recipe from Southeastern Indiana Beekeepers Association calls for using vinegar in small doses with water gradually added into it until you get a wet, grainy mixture that packs well onto candy boards.
