creme of tarter and vinegar deadly for bees

[tefer2]

In the recent Kelley newsletter someone from England claimed that making fondant with creme of tarter or vinegar was deadly for honey bees. Anyone have any info to back that up ?

[Michael Bush]

There are studies that show a higher mortality.  I'm not sure I would use the term "deadly" but they will live shorter lives because of it.

[tefer2]

I have wondered what purpose creme of tarter or vinegar does to fondant or bee candy?
Can one make candy or fondant without those added with success ?

[backyard warrior]

the cream of tarter keeps the syrup from molding and getting slimey

[Hethen57]

I thought people put vinegar in their sugar water to keep it from spoiling so quick, and I just spoke with a professional beekeeper today who said he uses cider vinegar in sugar water instead of fumigillan to treat dysentery.  So it must be the combination of those two ingredients, or a really high level of vinegar that would cause problems.

[tefer2]

After posting this question I had to call my scientist friend to get his opinion.
He said, the way he understood it, was that the vinegar slightly acidifies the solution to get the crystallization needed to make fondant. Said he didn't know if it would set up without it.
So, I guess I will try a batch an see.

[Michael Bush]

>I have wondered what purpose creme of tarter or vinegar does to fondant or bee candy?

The combination of acid and heat causes some of the sugar to invert which changes the consistency of the candy and invert sugar is more appealing to the bees.

[tefer2]

I have used creme of tarter, and like apple cider vinegar better when making candy.
Thanks Mike, you make easier to understand.

[CapnChkn]

As Michael says, it "inverts" the sugar.  The thing here is what "invert" means.  It has to do with the way the sugars refract polarized light.  Sucrose, a compound of Glucose and Fructose refracts it to the right, "invert" sugar to the left.

What's happening is the sucrose is being re-hydrolized, split apart and rebuilt with a water molecule, making one glucose and one fructose molecule.  These are the basic components of Honey, and spoil less readily.  They also crystallize at a lower moisture content.  The reason I investigated this.  Honey is typically around 18% moisture, and Sucrose will crystalize at around 33%.  Thinking this would be a good idea, to stock them up on syrup close to honey, I made about 3 gallons of the stuff.

Glucose and Fructose also absorb moisture from the air.  It helps to keep the fondant and pollen cakes soft and moist.  Invert sugar is easily made by boiling granulated sugar with citric, ascorbic acid, or "Creme of Tartar."  Creme of Tartar is a by-product of the wine industry.  It would follow that Acetic acid also works, but I couldn't find any indication when I tried.

THEN!   :thunder:  I discover that when Fructose is held in "low-high" temperatures and with acid present, it makes a compound toxic to bees, harmless to most other life, called HMF or Hydroxymethylfurfural.  It happens at a fairly low temperature, just above body temperature (and I can't quickly find the reference I had for this info.  It's like 113° F [45°C].).

Honey doesn't have this problem as the bees convert the sucrose they usually eat in nectar to the more storable glucose-fructose by the use of an enzyme secreted in the honey stomach called Invertase.  You can find Invertase on the market, it's used to make Chocolate covered cherries.  That's how they get the gooey center, it's mixed as a fondant, and the cherries balled in the middle then covered with chocolate.  Aged for several weeks where the converted sugars turn to liquid.  Invertase is too expensive for this bee-feed though.

Since processing of the invert sugar involved boiling the sugar mixture for at least a half hour, and to get the moisture down to 18% I had to continue to heat until the thermometer read 234°F (112°C), I decided not to risk it with my bees, and gave the syrup to one of my friends so he could make cakes.

One of the main problems with High Fructose corn syrup is the production of HMF.  It's like all over the place!

[kingbee]

... someone ...claimed that making fondant with creme of tarter or vinegar was deadly for honey bees...

I do not know where this came from.  Since the PH of sugar is neutral I can not see any reason to use either creme of tarter or vinegar in fondant except to prevent the sugar from crystalzing (like in cookie recipes) or to modify the PH of sugar to inhibit the growth of bacteria, mould, or yeasts.  Since sugar as well as honey has some impressive antibacterial properties of their own, so I can not imagine that is the reason one would use these acids in fondant.

However about 40-50 odd years ago there was a strong subculture around apple cider vinegar and honey in holistic healing.  Some claimed that honey and apple cider vinegar taken together cured everything from cancer and baldness to ingrown toenails.
Creme of tarter and vinegar are both by products of wine making so this linkage may have influenced the inclusion of creme of tarter and vinegar in fondant recipes.

[Intheswamp]

I made up a small batch of 2:1 the other day.  Normally I use hot water from the faucet but this time I boiled the water and mixed in 1000mg of vitamin C.  My reason for adding the vitamin C was to lower the pH of the syrup.  I then took the water and C off the burner and stirred in the sugar applying no further heat.  I only used 5 pounds of sugar so this resulted in roughly 2 and 2/3's quarts of 2:1 syrup.

Should I be concerned here, or is this mix "good to go"?

Thanks,
Ed

[CapnChkn]

I made up a small batch of 2:1 the other day.  Normally I use hot water from the faucet but this time I boiled the water and mixed in 1000mg of vitamin C.  My reason for adding the vitamin C was to lower the pH of the syrup.  I then took the water and C off the burner and stirred in the sugar applying no further heat.  I only used 5 pounds of sugar so this resulted in roughly 2 and 2/3's quarts of 2:1 syrup.

Should I be concerned here, or is this mix "good to go"?

I actually don't know.  From what I've learned, it has to do with time and temperature.  That's why commercial beeks can use the HFCS without creating huge problems, but can't store it in a high temperature for any length of time.  There's a little more to making HFCS than just inverting the sugars as well.

[Michael Bush]

I use ascorbic acid and have seen no issues.

[rail]

Are candy boards harmful to bees?

[Michael Bush]

Any feeding of sugar will increase the incidence of Nosema (Mike Palmer quoted some tests they did in Vermont on the matter), but that is always better than starvation.  Some candy boards recipes have cream of tartar in them...

[jtow]

One of our bee club members uses creme of tartar in her bee candy receipe, and she says she has good success wintering her bees.

[SEEYA]

I have seen several post that mistakenly suggest or imply that alcohol can be changed to vinegar.
Vinegar and alcohol are byproducts of yeast metabolism, which depends on the environment.

yeast + sugar in a solution + oxygen = vinegar

yeast + sugar in a solution -oxygen  = alcohol 

[tefer2]

http://wadesbees.wordpress.com/
I found this on creme of tarter. Explains it better than I can.

[Tommyt]

No reason to click the link  :-D
Hope it helps
Tommyt
Bee Candy
January 8, 2012
For about 40 years now, the recipe I have used to make bee candy (in this case, Fuller candy) for making candy boards is as follows:

1. Place one pint of water in the bottom of a cooking pot.  Add five pounds of table sugar.

2. Bring mixture to a bubbling boil (230°F) with no stirring.

3. Add one-third teaspoon cream of tartar.  Continue heating to a rolling boil, without stirring, to 238°F.  Remove from heat and allow to cool to 125°F with no stirring.

4. When cooled to 125°F, stir until it just begins to turn cloudy and immediately pour into molds.

I use the deep side of an inner cover as a mold, taking care not to cover the ventilation hole in the center of the cover with candy.  This batch size resulting from this recipe just fills one inner cover making it very convenient, and enables me to make candy boards without using specialized equipment or molds.

Recently I was asked about the use of the cream of tartar in this recipe.  There are on-line references as well as beekeeping books that suggest the use of cream of tartar may be deleterious to bees and recommend against its use in making fondant (bee candy).  As a result, I have tried to answer two questions for my own edification: 1) why is it added in the first place; and 2) is it harmful.  The first question has been easier to answer than the second.

Cream of tartar is added to acidify the sugar solution.  The acidified sugar solution apparently does a couple of things.  First, it helps to "invert" the sugar solution, much as the enzyme invertase, added in the bees' honey stomach, does naturally.  Warning: a little bit of chemistry coming. In technical terms, sucrose is a disaccharide, which means that it is a molecule derived from two simple sugars (monosaccharides). In the case of sucrose, these monosaccharide building blocks are fructose and glucose. The splitting of sucrose is a hydrolysis reaction. The hydrolysis can be induced simply by heating an aqueous solution of sucrose, but more commonly, catalysts are added to accelerate the conversion. The biological catalysts that are added are called sucrases (in animals) and invertases (in plants). Acid, such as occurs in lemon juice or cream of tartar, also accelerates the conversion of sucrose to invert.  The "inversion" in "inverted sugar" refers to the direction a solution of the sugar rotates polarized light.  Two simple sugars, glucose and fructose, make up sucrose (a.k.a. table sugar).  Glucose and fructose rotate polarized light in opposite directions when in solution.  This is why the alternate names for glucose and fructose are dextrose and levulose, respectively.  "Dextro" means "right" and "Levo" means "left."  Similarly, a solution of sucrose rotates polarized light.  Plane polarized light, when passed through a pure sucrose solution, is rotated to the right. As the solution is converted to a mixture of sucrose, fructose and glucose, the amount of rotation is reduced until (in a fully converted solution) the direction of rotation changes (inverts) from right to left.  So, when you see reference to "inverted sugar," what is being referred to is a mixture of sucrose, glucose and fructose.

The advantage of "inverted sugar" over sucrose in making candy boards is that inverted sugar crystallizes with much finer crystals that sucrose does.  The resulting candy has a fudge-like texture rather than a coarser, grainy texture and is presumably easier for the bees to consume as a result.  This, then, is the main reason cream of tartar is called for in this and many other bee candy recipes.

I have not been able to find the original source of the idea that cream of tartar is harmful to bees, though I have found that sentiment repeated in a number of blogs, websites, and published references.  None of the references I found provided a citation to the original research or report that led to that conclusion.  So it is unclear to me whether the assertion that cream of tartar is harmful to bees is true or not.  My emperical experience of the last 40 years would suggest there is no significant harm to the bees; I have never associated the use of candy boards that I have made using the above recipe with any adverse effect on the bees.  Nevertheless, this year I substituted one tablespoon of vinegar for the cream of tartar in the above recipe in the candy boards I made, and it worked well; it actually went into solution much easier that the cream of tartar ever did, and I will likely continue to use vinegar in the future, not so much because of concern over the cream of tarter, but because of the increased ease of making the candy in the first place.  (Besides, who has a 1/3-teaspoon measuring spoon???)

The only reason I can postulate as to why cream of tartar might be at all harmful relates to the formation of hydroxymethylfurfurol (HMF).  HMF is known to be toxic to bees, and its presence in high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the reason some recommend against feeding HFCS to bees.

HMF is essentially absent in fresh food, but it is naturally generated in sugar-containing foods during heat-treatments like drying or cooking (or boiling sugar syrup for feeding to bees?).  Along with many other flavor- and color-related substances, HMF is formed in the Maillard reaction (the same reaction that causes bread to brown as it bakes) as well as during caramelization (possibly explaining why caramelized sugar is bad for bees).  Acid conditions favor generation of HMF, and I wonder if the formation of HMF in acidified (with tartaric acid) and heated sugar syrup may be the reason some have concluded cream of tartar is harmful to honey bees, i.e., it's not so much the cream of tartar per se as it is HMF formed as a result of its addition.  I must emphasize this is pure speculation on my part and I have no data to document the presence of HMF in candy boards made with cream of tartar.  (I should also note that if my hypothesis is correct, that HMF is forming in the acidified sugar syrup, then it probably doesn't matter whether you use cream of tartar or vinegar, the result is likely to be the same.)

Interestingly, HMF has a practical use in monitoring food quality.  HMF can be found naturally in low amounts in honey, fruit-juices and UHT-milk (ultra-high temperature). Here as well as in vinegars, jams, alcoholic products or biscuits HMF can be used as an indicator for excess heat-treatment. For instance, fresh honey only has low amounts of HMF—less than 15 mg/kg—depending on pH-value and temperature and age.  The Codex Alimentarius standard (a compendium of international food standards) requires that honey have less than 40 mg/kg HMF to guarantee that the honey has not undergone excessive heating during processing (except for tropical honeys which must be below 80 mg/kg).