feeding

[don2]

what measuring method for sugar/water do you use? Weight or volume ?   D2

[BeeMaster2]

One of the nice things about making sugar water is that you can use either one and it will be right. If you are making a  1 to 1 mixture, add one pint, quart or gallon of water to one pint, quart or gallon of sugar or add equil weights of both of them.
Jim

[chorrylan]

Even easier in metric: 1 litre or kilogram of water mixed with 1 litre or kilogram of sugar.
For this purpose both water and sugar weigh close enough to 1 kg/litre  (i think sugar is actually around 850g/litre?)

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[little john]

There is absolutely no need whatsoever for exactness when making-up sugar solutions.

If you look at tables for nectar sugar content (which is - or ought to be - the reference beekeepers use), you'll see that they vary widely - and are nowhere near as concentrated as 1:1.

What I do from time to time is make-up a bulk sugar syrup solution as strong as I can make it - but without busting a gut. It tends to end-up somewhere around 3:1 . This will last indefinitely in sealed containers without spoiling - certainly for a full season or so.  Then - I simply roughly dilute it as required. 'Roughly' being the operative word. Thin at the beginning of the season, thick at the end.

Never had a bee complain yet ... 

LJ

[Michael Bush]

>what measuring method for sugar/water do you use? Weight or volume ?

It really doesn't matter...
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfeeding.htm#weightorvolume

I usually measure water in pints and sugar in pounds knowing a pound of sugar is about a pint of sugar and a pint of water is about a pound of water.

[Richard M]

.............What I do from time to time is make-up a bulk sugar syrup solution as strong as I can make it - but without busting a gut. It tends to end-up somewhere around 3:1 . This will last indefinitely in sealed containers without spoiling - certainly for a full season or so.  Then - I simply roughly dilute it as required. 'Roughly' being the operative word. Thin at the beginning of the season, thick at the end...................

I like that idea; it would have to save a lot of hassle.

We've had a shocking summer here - terrible drought, big bushfires - areas of pencil pine and cushion plant bog that haven't had a fire through in perhaps 5000 years have simply burnt down to the gravel.

So the upshot is that with the exception of a single hive that gave us 13Kg of honey, the rest have done zilch basically, 3 of them have less honey this week than they had 6 weeks ago, so all 4 are being fed; I just got back from giving each of them 5L (1.3 gall) each of 2:1.

Being able to produce and store until needed would save a lot of hassle.

What's the strongest syrup one could produce without it recrystallising at room temperature?

[little john]

In my experience, around 3:1 - that's if you partially invert it. It might be possible to produce stuff thicker than that if you a) heated it for longer and, b) inverted it more fully.

But - I like to keep things as simple as possible - so, I determine the approximate amount of water to add to a given number of 1Kg sugar bags, and heat that to boiling. For small amounts, I use a domestic electric kettle - for a larger amount, a tea urn.

So - staying with the electric kettle method - I warm-up a deep saucepan (actually a Prestige Hi-Top Pressure Cooker, without it's top) which takes 2.75 pints water and 4 Kg of sugar (to give around 3:1).  Then, in goes the boiling water, a level tablespoonful of citric acid, and then I add the sugar, bag by bag, stirring well between each one. Then I walk away and let it cool down. As it cools, the citric acid partially inverts the syrup - without any additional heating, and thus expense.

The resulting syrup looks identical to normal syrup - that is, until you compare it alongside 'straight' syrup of identical strength, thusly:




The inverted syrup is on the left, with the green top.  It appears that the inversion causes a slight change in the refractive index. It might be possible to achieve 4:1 with additional heating and more acid, but that would be more work and expense, so I've settled for this.

The 4-pint milk jugs are free of course, and I don't find it much of a hardship to fill 50 in one go. That's 25 gallons which can then be stored away on a shelf until needed.

I have heard of someone simply chucking excess sugar into cold water, and allowing it to dissolve over time, then decanting the resulting syrup from the excess residue. I've never done that, and it doesn't much appeal to me, but it's another possible method.

Sorry to hear you've had a hard time - over here, the last few months have been the complete opposite to yours: exceptionally mild, but with rain nearly every day, in some places a month's worth in an hour - and widespread flooding because of this.
Let's hope next year is better for all of us.

LJ

[Richard M]

In my experience, around 3:1 - that's if you partially invert it. It might be possible to produce stuff thicker than that if you a) heated it for longer and, b) inverted it more fully.

But - I like to keep things as simple as possible - so, I determine the approximate amount of water to add to a given number of 1Kg sugar bags, and heat that to boiling. For small amounts, I use a domestic electric kettle - for a larger amount, a tea urn.

So - staying with the electric kettle method - I warm-up a deep saucepan (actually a Prestige Hi-Top Pressure Cooker, without it's top) which takes 2.75 pints water and 4 Kg of sugar (to give around 3:1).  Then, in goes the boiling water, a level tablespoonful of citric acid, and then I add the sugar, bag by bag, stirring well between each one. Then I walk away and let it cool down. As it cools, the citric acid partially inverts the syrup - without any additional heating, and thus expense.

The resulting syrup looks identical to normal syrup - that is, until you compare it alongside 'straight' syrup of identical strength, thusly:




The inverted syrup is on the left, with the green top.  It appears that the inversion causes a slight change in the refractive index. It might be possible to achieve 4:1 with additional heating and more acid, but that would be more work and expense, so I've settled for this.

The 4-pint milk jugs are free of course, and I don't find it much of a hardship to fill 50 in one go. That's 25 gallons which can then be stored away on a shelf until needed.

I have heard of someone simply chucking excess sugar into cold water, and allowing it to dissolve over time, then decanting the resulting syrup from the excess residue. I've never done that, and it doesn't much appeal to me, but it's another possible method.

Sorry to hear you've had a hard time - over here, the last few months have been the complete opposite to yours: exceptionally mild, but with rain nearly every day, in some places a month's worth in an hour - and widespread flooding because of this.
Let's hope next year is better for all of us.

LJ

That's interesting - I get that brownish colour too, I was worried that I'd burnt it but couldn't see how as I boil it gently and keep it well stirred and no caramel residue in the pan when emptied.

The original advice I received was to stir it into hot water and let it dissolve but that's never worked for me - it always recrystallises and blocks feeders, whereas it wont do that if I boil it up for a few minutes and adding the citric acid certainly helps. We recently had a kitchen renovation and SWMBO hid (she says reorganised) the citric acid - I used white vinegar instead - that also seemed to do the trick too. So it's a combination of acid and boiling that does it?

What would happen if you fed them a 3:1 mix (for winter) directly? Any reason it has to be diluted?

[little john]

We recently had a kitchen renovation and SWMBO hid (she says reorganised) the citric acid - I used white vinegar instead - that also seemed to do the trick too. So it's a combination of acid and boiling that does it?

What would happen if you fed them a 3:1 mix (for winter) directly? Any reason it has to be diluted?

'Yes' to your first question - it's called 'acid inversion'.  Pretty-much any acid will do the job - citric, acetic - or even a capful of bleach (hypochlorite > hypochlorous acid).  The amount of acid and the length of time with the raised temperature then determines how much sucrose becomes inverted into glucose and fructose.  In turn, it's the elimination of that percentage of sucrose from an otherwise super-saturated sucrose solution which reduces the tendency for crystallisation to occur.

So - the more inversion that takes place, the less the risk of crystallisation - BUT - as you're clearly aware - the greater also becomes the risk of generating HMF from dehydration of the free fructose which has been generated from that inversion.  So it becomes a trade-off.  I choose to steer a safe course by allowing whatever residual heat remains from the initial dissolving of sucrose to stimulate it's inversion, and leave it at that - even if the amount of inversion which occurs isn't anywhere near optimum.

'No' to your second question - there's no need to dilute it as a winter feed, in fact the bees will thank you for it, as there'll be a little less water for them to remove.

The only downside to the creation of thick syrup is the cost of the energy to heat the water - otherwise, it has a lot going for it.

LJ

[CaribBeeman]

I see the mention of adding lemon peel in the sugar mix.
my kids use lemon peel in producing a homemade substitute for Golden Syrup.
the golden syrup has a long shelf life.
anyone uses golden syrup for feeding the bees?

[little john]

I did buy some Tate & Lyles Golden Syrup a few years back, with every intention of trialling it, but never did - as I could never discover whether it contained any significant amounts of HMF or not.

I've just compared current supermarket prices of G/Syrup and Cane Sugar - G/Syrup is 4x as expensive to purchase, and that excludes the water it contains which you are paying for.  So maybe it's more like 5x as expensive.  Not a very attractive proposition - even if it is safe to use ...

Nice stuff for cooking with, mind - kids love it.
LJ