Junk food

[Mellifera Crofter]

Sorry - I'm returning to the winter-feeding topic ...

You have assured me the bees will find combs of honey to the left and right of the cluster on fine days. Despite this, I wanted to be absolutely sure they had enough to eat, so I also left them candy on top of the frames, and recently added some more candy. As this is right above them and within easy reach, are they going to eat this junk food (like us humans sometimes do) in preference to healthy honey just a little bit to their left or right? Am I making them lazy?

Cheers,
Kitta

[Jon]

They will eat fondant when the temperature is warm enought to process it, I reckon when it is 6 degrees of above.
When it is really cold they just wont touch it.
I lost two small nucs around Christmas time and both had fondant right above the cluster. The temperature was down to -14 some nights.
Under normal circumstances they work away at it.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks Jon. I did not realise they'll wait for warmer weather before eating. I thought that if they're on top or underneath the food, and they don't have to leave the cluster, they'll eat if hungry. Sorry about your nucs!

My question was more - on warmer days - will they eat candy or fondant in preference to honey if the candy was closer to them?

Kitta

[Neils]

Purely anecdotally, mine last year ignored the fondant completely which I placed in early January until sometime in February. I've only just added fondant to mine last weekend despite them still being fairly heavy with stores so I might have a better idea over the next couple of weeks, they were certainly investigating it after I'd put it on.

[Rosie]

Kitta

I think you will find that if you put fondant on a hive that has sufficient honey for the winter it will still be there, untouched, in the spring. That tells me that they prefer honey. I suspect that they would prefer sugar honey to fondant too but I am not sure.

Rosie

[gavin]

Usually the warmth from the cluster and the moist air coming off it helps them use fondant which is immediately above their heads. As in, straight on the top bars or on a queen excluder placed over them. The crown board is too far away.

If you laid out a choice test on a flat board - if such a thing is possible with honeybees - I would imagine they would go for the honey. There is certainly pollen in honey, and no doubt other goodies too that they find attractive. But they get by fine on fondant if they are short on stores. I was intending to check on mine at lunchtime today, but the heavens opened and the temperature dropped several degrees so I'm still none the wiser about survival since I last saw them in late December.

[Jon]

I haven't seen any of mine since late December either but Mervyn said they were flying strongly two weeks ago when he took some samples.

re the fondant, it can't do any harm if you think stores are low but if the temperature is below zero for a week I don't think it will prevent starvation.

[gavin]

Do you mean in a very small cluster, Jon? If the bees are starving they are likely to be high on the frames, and close to where the warmed fondant is to be found. I would have thought that in the majority of cases fondant would stop starvation. Maybe not if the cluster has committed to raising brood at some distant location. Last winter I learned the value of insulation (no, I learned the penalty of not insulating) as the warmer it is the less likely isolation starvation will happen.

[Jon]

The two nucs I lost had very small clusters but had fondant right above them.
The fondant might as well have been a breeze block as it was frozen solid.
A bigger cluster probably would not have the same problem.
One of them had a dodgy queen and probably would not have made it through the winter anyway.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks for everybody's thoughts on honey v candy. It's good to know, Rosie and Nellie, that your bees ignored the fondant in favour of honey. That means I'm not tempting the bees away from proper food, but that the candy is simply emergency food in case they need it. I think I'll try your suggested experiment later this year, Gavin.

What is 'sugar honey', Rosie? Honey dissolved in sugar syrup?

Kitta