Winter patties provide bee colonies in need with carbohydrates and proteins to boost their stores in the fall or winter months, usually December through early spring. They can be placed into their hives between those dates.
Grease patties provide additional food and help tracheal mites during winter by covering bees with a sticky substance that smothers any mites that might come their way.
Contents
1. Mix the ingredients
Pollen patties (also called Global patties) can provide bees with both carbohydrates and protein during an emergency winter feed, helping stimulate brood rearing especially during early spring or late fall/winter months.
Make your own pollen patties by mixing sugar syrup, vegetable oil or shortening and pollen into balls before placing on wax paper. Betterbee offers pre-formulated pollen patties.
Be mindful when feeding protein patties as these can contain high-calorie food sources that could result in excessive swarming in spring. Pollen patties should only ever be used during a winter dearth and never in the summer due to Small Hive Beetle attraction. When placing them above hive clusters on top brood boxes for use, remove after one week if not consumed and replace them as soon as they haven’t been completely consumed and replace with new.
2. Pour the mixture into the molds
Patties consisting mainly of carbohydrates with only small amounts of protein are designed to prevent queen bees from rearing too early brood. They can be fed to colonies that have run low on stores during wintertime or used as supplements in early spring before natural pollen starts entering their hives. Each patty contains sugar, Honey Bee Healthy and about 3% AP23 protein for best results.
Pollen patties, sometimes known as fondant, differ in that they feed specific bee species instead. While fondant encourages brood rearing, pollen patties should only be fed when bees are hungry but not yet rearing brood.
Make honey bee health treats easily at home! Combine one cup of granulated sugar with water until the sugar has completely dissolving, then stir in pollen substitute or pollen with two or three drops of Honey Bee Healthy and mix again until everything has combined well. Pour this mixture into a mold to set or pour onto a candy board with folded wax paper as an alternative solution.
3. Bake the patties
When honey stores run low and temperatures remain cold enough for bees to remain inside their hive, offering sugar supplements may help. Candy boards made of capped frames placed just above bee clusters, fondant made of shortening or oil and spread onto top bars of hive or even simple granulated sugar on newspaper can all provide assistance for bee colonies requiring extra sustenance.
Winter patties like our Pro Winter Patties may also provide an effective means of delaying brood rearing by providing high carb and minimal protein feeds, designed to prevent your queen from starting brood rearing too early. They should be used from approximately December until it becomes too cold to open your hive.
Once spring arrives and you can open your hives again, consider switching to our Ultra Bee Pollen Patty as it offers both carbohydrates and proteins for your colonies’ population growth.
4. Place the patties in the hive
Sugar patties should only be used as emergency winter feeding or to supplement hive stores if necessary, since their low protein content will not benefit brood rearing. Furthermore, their high carbohydrate content could encourage bees to produce extra honey for flight fuel and food storage (thus depleting natural resources within their colony).
Pollen patties contain more protein than sugar-based supplements, so they should only be fed during fall as part of a pollen substitute patty feed mix; their protein-rich nature could encourage bees to begin brood-rearing too soon, which would be counterproductive during a cold spring.
Winter patties provide the ideal solution for emergencies or supplementing winter feed, being high in carbohydrates with protein supplements (AP23 pollen substitute and Honey Bee Healthy) readily accepted by bees. They can be placed directly over the cluster in a hive eke or on top bars.
