Picture this. You and your many sisters are scooped up by a [...]]]> This is a new beekeeper question—and a very good one. If you install your bees on drawn comb with a good supply of honey, you probably don’t need to feed. But if you are installing that package on fresh-from-the-box woodenware, read on.

Picture this. You and your many sisters are scooped up by a gigantic, flightless, hairy malcontent and put into a wooden crate with a nasty stepmother who is locked in a cage next to you. Her perfume reeks. Your box is shipped halfway across the country in the back of a giant truck with hundreds of other such receptacles. You’re given some watery syrup to keep you alive. You sip this half-heartedly and even share it with the nasty stepmother as you and yours are jostled around in the airless, dark, smelly container. It’s hard to hang on as you sway this way and that. Some of you fall off and die.

Eventually, after changing vehicles a few times, you are sprayed with cold syrup (that’s right, you get sprayed with your dinner) and then dumped in a large two-story box with wooden frames hanging like empty picture frames on parallel clotheslines. What gives?

Over the next few days you become accustomed to your nasty stepmother who no longer seems so nasty. In fact, she’s really not bad at all . . . even her perfume is becoming tolerable. You groom her, feed her, and keep her warm as best you can through the odd screened cage. Then one day the hairy malcontent throws off your roof, lets in the cold air, and releases your stepmother. It’s all so hard to comprehend.

Now pay close attention. The days are balmy, plants are growing, and you are working your asses off trying to build a nursery, bring in supplies, feed the family, take care of the babies, and get ready for the coming winter. But there isn’t enough food for everyone. Some family members are hunting all day long, bringing home everything they can find, but it’s not enough. It’s not sufficient for a family that started out with nothing in the pantry, especially when they first had to build the pantry. Some of your siblings are exhausted from overwork; the weakest ones are falling dead. The family is shrinking. Step mom is pregnant, but there’s not enough food to raise all the kids. Things are looking bleak. What you really need is a food bank.

Then one day the hairy malcontent returns, more malcontent than ever because his high-priced box of creatures is disappearing. He has brought a companion—also hairy but definitely quicker on the uptake—who installs a temporary food bank just above the nursery. You and your siblings give thanks—with this little boost to your diet you will be able to “catch up.” You will be able to get that nursery completed, the furniture installed, the kids fed . . . and maybe convince step mom to raise some sons. And if you’re lucky, you will be able to fill the pantry before winter.

So to all you first-time beekeepers out there, the short answer is “yes”—feed that new package of bees. You will be glad you did.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite.com

Creatures in a box. This could be you! Flickr photo by Joe DeLuca.

Q: So what should I feed my bees, sugar syrup, fondant, or hard candy?

A: Both liquid feed [...]]]> My recent posts on heat transfer in liquid and solid feeds have generated a host of good questions. Since many of the questions are similar, I’ve attempted to answer them in the following Q & A.

Q: So what should I feed my bees, sugar syrup, fondant, or hard candy?

A: Both liquid feed and solid feed have their place. Ideally, a solution of 2:1 syrup can be fed in the fall until the syrup itself reaches about 50°F (10°C). In colder temperatures solid feed (either fondant or hard candy) should be fed.

Q: I’ve heard that evaporating the syrup is particularly difficult for the bees in cold weather and this is why it shouldn’t be fed in winter. What do you think?

A: There are really two questions here.

Q1: Is it difficult for bees to evaporate water from syrup in winter?

A1: Absolutely. Cold air holds less moisture than warm air, so in a cold hive no amount of fanning will evaporate the water from cold syrup. Think of dew. Dew forms on objects because the cold air of evening cannot hold all the moisture that warmer daytime can hold. As the temperature drops, the water vapor literally falls out of the air and condenses on things. If winter air cannot hold the moisture from the syrup, it will not evaporate no matter how hard the bees work.

Q2: Is this why you shouldn’t feed syrup in winter?

A2: Most winter feed is not given to bees in the hopes they will store it, it is given to bees to keep them from starving should they run out of honey. A feeder full of cold syrup in your hive will not hurt your bees, but it won’t help them either. It just sits there because it is too cold for the bees to drink. And since they won’t drink it, it is not an emergency food source.

Q: Don’t bees need some water in order to eat hard candy and fondant?

A: Yes, a source of moisture is needed, but there is plenty of moisture in the hive for this. The moisture from bee respiration condenses on cool surfaces just like the dew. Since the fondant or candy is above the bees, the moisture from their breath lands on it and condenses. Unless you live in the desert, damp air coming in from outside through the entrance may condense on the solid sugar as well. These sources provide plenty of water for the bees to consume solid sugar.

Q: Won’t bees leave the hive in dangerously cold temperatures in order to find water to dilute the fondant?

A: No. Bees don’t commit suicide. At any rate, the colder the air, the less water it will hold—and the more bee respiration will condense on the sugar.

Q: I’m confused. I thought 2:1 syrup was fed to bees in order to build up reserves for winter.

A: It is. But, as I mentioned above, the purpose of fall feed and the purpose of winter feed are different. A hearty feeding of 2:1 syrup in the fall while temperatures are still warm enough to evaporate it will be stored by the bees and used to increase their winter food supply. On the other hand, the purpose of winter feed is to keep bees that are low on stores from starving—they are not going to store their winter feed, they’re going to eat it.

Q: Should all bees be fed sugar?

A: No. Bees should eat honey. Sugar is fed when a colony hasn’t collected sufficient stores to make it until spring, when the beekeeper has over-harvested, or when the beekeeper needs to administer certain medicines, such as Fumagilin for Nosema diseases.

Q: So you’re not advocating solid sugar over liquid sugar?

A: I’m not advocating anything. I’m just trying to explain why the bees treat different feeds differently at different temperatures. Very specific physical properties govern how the world works. The more you know of these, the easier it is to make good management decisions.

Rusty

HoneyBeeSuite.com

The alternative [to [...]]]> The following question was written in response to my post “Heat transfer in sugar syrup.” It’s a great question but a complex subject. The following is a vastly simplified explanation, but I hope it begins to explain why the bees can eat cold sugar but not cold syrup. The comment follows:

The alternative [to sugar syrup], fondant, relies on the bee liquidizing the sugar with saliva, so presumably the substance is then at the correct temperature automatically—is that correct?

The answer lies in the different ways heat moves through liquid sugar and solid sugar. In fluids (both liquids and gases) convection plays a large part in heat transfer. Convection is the collective movement of molecules within a fluid. As molecules of fluid become warmer, they jiggle more, and the substance becomes less dense. The less dense portions rise to the top and the colder (denser) portions fall to the bottom. All this rising and falling of molecules causes the fluid to mix.

The syrup in your bee feeder receives warmth from the sun (the warmed atmosphere) and warmth from the bee bodies—both of which cause convective heat currents in the syrup. But since there is usually little heat and a lot of syrup, the heating process is slow. More convective currents will occur in a pail feeder than in a flat baggy feeder simply because there is more room for rising and falling of the molecules in a deep container than a shallow one. At night when the air temperature dips, any excess warmth will leave through the top of the feeders. More heat will be lost through a large surface area (baggy feeder) than a small surface area (pail feeder.)

Here’s a great irony about syrup feeders: Since the bees (a heat source) are directly beneath the feeders, the syrup may be warmer at the bottom of a shallow baggy feeder than at the top (because of little mixing and lots of heat loss) but the bees have to drink it from the top. Conversely, the syrup may be warmer at the top of a pail feeder than at the bottom (because of lots of mixing and little heat loss) but the bees have to drink it from the bottom.

Heat transfer is totally different in your fondant, sugar cakes, or candy boards which are solids. Instead of the warm molecules moving throughout the substance, the molecules stay fixed in one position and just the heat moves from molecule to molecule in a process called conduction.

Although it would take a long time for bee heat to warm the entire sugar cake, an interesting thing happens—since the material doesn’t mix, the surface of the sugar cake, especially that surface nearest the bees, becomes quite warm . . . warm enough to eat!

Mind you, it’s only the thin surface layer that is very warm, but the bees eat slowly and they eat from the surface. The rate of eating is slow enough, in fact, that the newly exposed surfaces have time to warm up before the bees eat them. Whereas in-hive convection warms your entire container of syrup slightly, in-hive conduction warms the surface layer of solid sugar substantially. What a system.

Rusty

HoneyBeeSuite.com

One of these read: “Why are we feeding [...]]]> The first thing I do in the morning is check my HBS e-mail for questions and comments. I love answering and often spend considerable time researching the details. But today my box was filled with “unanswerable” questions—questions (five of them!) where the answer depends on philosophy.

One of these read: “Why are we feeding bees at all? I have such a hard time hearing about this practice of interfering with the bees’ food source.”

I’m at a crossroads with this question. On one hand, I’m a proponent of organic agriculture and natural beekeeping. I have spent much of my academic life studying the adverse effects of pesticides, GMOs, and other “big ag” practices that are damaging life on earth. On the other hand, during my undergraduate study of agronomic crops, I developed a real empathy for those who must raise crops to feed the populous and make a living in the process. It’s tough stuff.

Honey bees are one of many species that have taken a hit because of modern agricultural practices. Anyone who forgets that bees are livestock—farm animals, if you will—is missing the big picture. Honey bees are needed for our system of industrial agriculture whether we like it or not. Personally, I don’t like the system, but my opinion has no bearing on its existence.

Of course, commercial beekeepers are not the only ones who feed syrup to bees. A beekeeper with one or a dozen hives may do it, and certainly those with thousands of hives do it. Let’s first look at the reasons without moral judgment:

• A beekeeper may believe his hives are not well-stocked enough with honey to make it through the winter. This may be due to bad weather, robbing, predation, or over-harvesting. In any case, the beekeeper is trying to save his bees from starvation.

• A beekeeper may have a pollination contract to fulfill and he needs a fast build up in the spring,. So he feeds syrup, perhaps laced with supplemental pollen or amino acids.

• A beekeeper may have problems with a disease such as Nosema so he decides to treat his hives. Syrup is the only way to administer the medicine.

• A beekeeper may be starting new colonies from splits or nucs. There is a good chance they won’t survive the first year unless they have a syrup supplement.

Now let’s look at the right-and-wrong of it. Many people think it is wrong to over-harvest the honey and feed the bees syrup instead. I agree with this, but I can understand the other side of the coin. If you are a commercial honey producer, which is “more” right: over-harvesting that valuable honey crop or making your kids go without medical care? Surely, that’s the extreme, the exception, but those situations can and do exist.

If you are an orchardist, are you going to run the risk of losing your crop because it’s wrong to feed syrup to the bees? If you are a commercial beekeeper are you going to default on a pollination contract because your bees didn’t build up fast enough? Growers and commercial beekeepers are business people, and they need to make competent business decisions.

As I stated in my earliest posts, I find the rift between commercial and hobby beekeepers disturbing. As hobbyists, we have lots of freedom. We can molly-coddle our bees, we can treat them like house pets and sing them to sleep–and it doesn’t cut into our bottom line, our personal finances, tomorrow’s meals. Meanwhile the commercial beekeeper is keeping a large segment of the agricultural industry rolling. He’s helping to put food on our tables, assuring us a steady supply of fresh produce and a healthful, varied diet. While we dine on this feast we criticize him for the sugar syrup thing. It hardly seems fair.

For me, the biggest question is one of moral responsibility. Do you find it more desirable to let your bees starve to death than feed them syrup? If you’ve had a hot, dry summer with little forage (as occurred in much of the U.S. this year) do you say, “Tough luck bees, you get to die a slow and painful death because it’s wrong for me to feed sugar syrup”? I find this philosophy repugnant. I believe that once you take an animal into your care you have a responsibility to give it the best life you can. Starving to death is not a good life.

One more point about the question: The writer referred to sugar syrup feeding as “interfering with the bees’ food source.” I disagree with that assessment completely. What interferes with the bees’ food source is not sugar syrup, but urbanization, industrialization, human population, agriculture, roads and freeways, pesticides, pollution, invasive species, global warming, deforestation, mountain top removal, and on and on. Without those things, there would be plenty of forage–and syrup would be a non-issue.

No doubt, honey is the single best food for honey bees and that is what they should be given whenever possible. But it’s not always possible in the environment we’ve created, and it’s not always the best answer given other circumstances. That old saying about walking a mile in another man’s moccasins before passing judgment applies. Nearly all beekeepers would love to avoid syrup, but sometimes they can’t. Who am I to judge?

Rusty

HoneyBeeSuite.com

The answer is “they can’t.” Bees can never turn sugar syrup into honey. Harry Potter himself couldn’t do it. Syrup is made from granulated sugar (sucrose) dissolved in water. After the bees get done [...]]]> The question usually goes something like this: “How long does it take for the bees to turn syrup into honey?”

The answer is “they can’t.” Bees can never turn sugar syrup into honey. Harry Potter himself couldn’t do it. Syrup is made from granulated sugar (sucrose) dissolved in water. After the bees get done finagling with it, enzyming it, fanning it, and storing it you still have sugar in water—nothing more.

The idea that bees can change syrup into honey comes from the mistaken belief that enzymes in the bee’s honey stomach are responsible for creating honey. But it’s the chemical compounds in nectar—an astounding array of different substances—that gives honey its flavor and aroma.

In spite of its lack of substance, bees treat sugar syrup as if it were honey. They take it into their honey stomachs, pass it around, store it in cells, and dry it to the proper moisture level. This is why honey producers never feed syrup while honey supers are in place. If syrup is readily available to bees, the real honey soon becomes contaminated with the syrup.

I knew a beekeeper who fed sugar syrup to her bees all spring and summer with honey supers in place and then marketed her product as “pure honey.” When I asked her about it, she explained to me that the bees ate the sugar syrup which gave them lots of energy to collect nectar and make honey. She saw nothing wrong with the practice because she thought the bees treated the substances differently. No amount of explanation on my part made an impression on her and, as far as I know, she still does it . . . and teaches a beekeeping class as well.

The important point here is that although syrup cannot be made into honey, bees treat syrup no differently than nectar. If we interfere with the bees’ life processes (by feeding sugar syrup) we must understand the consequences of our actions and take steps to avoid problems.

Rusty

HoneyBeeSuite.com