Beekeepers need to feed their colonies for various reasons, whether that’s encouraging comb building, helping their colony survive an extraction season, or simply because they don’t have enough honey stored up for winter.
Beekeepers utilize various ratios when creating their sugar syrup. This calculator will assist in calculating the optimal ratio based on water and sugar weights.
Contents
1. Measure the Sugar
As temperatures decrease, your bees will require extra food in order to build enough honey stores before winter arrives and temperatures become too cold for them. Supplemental feeding allows them to do just this before it becomes too icy to do so themselves.
Sugar syrup should ideally be prepared using simple white table sugar (sucrose). No matter where it came from – cane, beet or whatever – its molecular structure remains similar.
Some beekeepers opt to wet the dry sugar before mixing it with water, to facilitate easier bee digestion of its crystallized form into food for them.
There are various ratios you can use when it comes to mixing sugar with water, such as 1:2 for an easy starter syrup recipe. A gallon contains 16 cups, making it quick and straightforward to create large amounts of syrup quickly.
Sugar syrup can be used in several ways to feed bees: frame feeders that look like comb frames can be placed between frames in your brood box, or hive top feeders on top. Fondant bee candy can also be made using this technique – simply fill a clean container (such as a plastic freezer bag) with sugar syrup, punch holes in its lid, and pour sugar syrup through them!
2. Heat the Water
Sugar syrup (commonly referred to as artificial nectar) is fed to bees during spring and summer to encourage them to build combs and rear brood when natural resources are low. Beekeepers will sometimes use this mix instead of honey during fall and winter as a supplement for their colonies’ food stores.
Beekeepers commonly refer to the ratio of sugar to water for making sugar syrup as 1:1. It’s important to remember that this measurement is by weight rather than volume as environmental conditions such as cool versus warm days, overcast vs sunny skies or soil fertility may alter this result considerably.
To create syrup, simply heat water until it just shy of boiling, remove from heat, and mix in sugar while it is still warm – this prevents caramelization which could prove toxic for bees.
3. Add the Sugar
Sugar should be added to water in a large enough container that allows easy stirring. Heat the water until just below boiling before adding sugar crystals and continuing stirring until all crystals have dispersed into solution. However, be careful not to boil your syrup immediately after adding the sugar as this could produce chemicals such as hydroxymethylfurfural that could kill bees.
A 2:1 sugar syrup is a thicker version of regular sugar syrup used as an artificial nectar source for bees during fall and early winter when there is insufficient honey on their hives after extraction. A 2:1 solution can help avoid bee starvation from too little nectar available.
A 1:1 sugar syrup is thinner than its 2:1 counterpart and used as a lighter sugar replacement to feed bees during spring and summer. Plus, its less heavyweight storage requirements make this alternative even easier! To create one yourself simply boil some water with sugar added until fully dissolved before stirring in hot water to dissolve everything completely.
4. Let It Cool
Sugar syrup provides essential sustenance to bee colonies when honey stores become depleted or when new colonies emerge; typically after installing package bees into their new hive or during early comb drawing stages.
Beekeepers commonly employ a mixture of equal parts sugar and water (known as 2:1 syrup) when feeding their colonies, to resemble nectar as closely as possible and encourage bees to start building comb. This thicker syrup enables bees to start building comb more rapidly when fed it to their hives.
Making an excellent sugar syrup requires not boiling it but instead slowly adding sugar while stirring constantly until reaching soft-ball stage, then remove from heat and allow to cool before giving to bees. A cool syrup also prevents formation of spores which could potentially lead to disease outbreak.
