A hive candy board provides essential nourishment to bees during winter when their stores of honey run low, helping them make it through long cold winters without starvation.
A hive candy board can also help reduce moisture. Condensation often builds up on the warm side of a hive where it collects, creating drip-down effects and chilling bees. A candy board helps eliminate this risk.
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Nutrition
Winter bees spend much of their time clustered together around their queen to preserve body heat, using up an enormous amount of energy in doing so and necessitating an ample supply of honey in their colony. For this reason it is crucial that enough bees be available within their colonies to make this necessary energy source available when winter rolls around.
Beekeepers have various means at their disposal for providing winter food to an underfed colony, such as using a division board feeder which can be placed directly over their cluster of bees.
However, one downside of this method is that the hive must be opened up in order to insert/remove division boards, check feed levels and refill its feeder with syrup. As an alternative solution, a plastic zip-lock sandwich bag filled with syrup could be placed above cluster.
Candy boards can be easily created at home or purchased at local bee supply stores. Each candy board stands about 2″ high, filled with hardened sugar to provide nutrition during winter months.
Mouth Control
A hive candy board is an additional layer of food designed to keep bees alive and thriving throughout winter. By providing food for them, these boards help provide sustenance that keeps their bees from starving or perishing during their stay in your hives.
Bees can use sugar as food without depleting their stores of honey, helping prevent moisture build-up during cold weather conditions and helping preserve their hive’s integrity.
Start by pouring the bag of sugar into a large storage tub. Next, mix in vinegar and Honey B Healthy until everything has combined fully, which may take several minutes of stirring by hand.
Moisture Absorption
Bees produce an excessive amount of moisture as they fan to stay warm in winter, and this condensation can accumulate on top of their hive. A candy board can absorb most of this excess moisture before it falls back down onto their cluster and kills bees.
Hive candy boards feature ventilation ports to enable any excess moisture to escape as temperatures fluctuate throughout the day, helping prevent mold, fungus and other issues associated with excess humidity in hives. This helps prevent potential mold outbreaks or issues caused by too much moisture accumulation within a hive.
When considering adding a hive candy board, fall or early winter is generally considered optimal, when honey stores have reached their maximum and brood rearing activities begin in earnest. Of course, this may vary depending on your own hives’ particular circumstances.
A hive candy board can be constructed using various materials. Premade forms may be purchased, or you can DIY using homasote boards which are easy to work with and readily available from building supply stores.
Easy Access
Honey bees need something to snack on when they cannot produce honey for themselves, which makes winter especially crucial. Utilizing a candy board in your hive is an excellent way to provide honey bees with sustenance they need for survival and good health.
Easy Access Bees can access their candy boards through two methods – climbing up through the bottom of a frame, or through holes cut in paper with thin enough paper that they can chew through it easily.
Our Hive Candy Board features ventilation ports on its upper part to let moisture that may accumulate in your hive dissipate as it evaporates, as well as being loaded with sugar and pollen for bees to consume as necessary.
