How To Make Bee Feed - How To Make Sugar Syrup For Bees - How to Mix Sugar Syrup - Drill Method

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today we're going to take a look at how we mix up sugar syrup, but we do it in a very specific way with absolutely no heating whatsoever. So when you're mixing up sugar syrup, it's kind of a standard way of doing it is putting it on the stove, heating up the water, adding the sugar into it, and kind of stirring until it's fully dissolved. It's a bit of a faff doing it on the stove, but the bigger issue is that when you start heating up the sugar, you kind of increase the HMF level, the HMF levels within the syrup, and that can be kind of really damaging to your bees. So obviously you can buy ready-made feeds, and in the winter I tend to go for the— in the winter, this year round, I'm going to have a go on the invert syrup. So I'm going to purchase those in as a specific bee feed. But today I need to make up quite a big batch of pollen patties, so I don't necessarily need it So I'm just going to make up some kind of 2:1 syrup here in the tank. I'm going to show you a method in which you don't actually need to heat up the water. And now this works for 1:1 syrup, it also works for 2:1 syrup. So that means that if you're using 1:1 syrup, it's 1 litre of water to 1 kilogram of sugar, and obviously 2:1 is 1 litre of water to 2 kilograms of sugar. So for the patties today, we're going to be using a 2:1 mix, so we're going to be using 1 litre of water to 2 kilograms of sugar, and you can kind of scale that up as you need. We've got about 100 kilos of sugar, so we're going to be doing it in the oil, the old oil drum today. So we're going to use 50 litres of water and then we're going to use 100 kilograms of sugar, and that should give us a 2:1 mix. I wouldn't get too kind of caught up exactly on the ratios, like, as long as it's there or thereabouts. The key things for me are is that you don't use any heat. So all we're using here is a plain white granulated sugar, cold water, and an electric drill to mix it up. And it's surprising how kind of quickly just the motion within the drill actually mixes that up and gets it completely dissolved. What you're looking for at the end is a clear liquid with no signs of any kind of granulation in there whatsoever. It'll be as light as possible because we're not using any heat. What you don't want to do is use heat and kind of get these yellows, horrible syrups. They're no good for your bees at all. So again, there's the argument going on about whether you should use a special type formulated bee feed, and I think in some instances that's definitely the way to go. And then there's the argument for kind of going with the cheaper option, which is just using this, which is just very plain granulated sugar, cold water, and a drill. So I won't get into the argument about which is better, plenty of YouTube videos out there already on that one. All I'm here today is to show you how you want to make up this mix. So we'll crack on, we'll fill the water up, and then I'll show you kind of how I actually make that mix and how we dispense it out the bottle. So just getting a little close-up in the drum there. I kind of know roughly where the 50-litre mark is, so I don't, I don't kind of go too crazy on getting that perfectly accurate. But I mean, that'll be in between, say, 45 and 55 litres, and that's fine for the purposes of making up this syrup. The big important thing to say is make sure you put your water in before you put your sugar in, otherwise it becomes quite difficult to mix with the drill. So we'll move on to adding the sugar and mixing it up. So this is the drill that I use. I've got this from Screwfix, about £60. Um, it's got a number of different settings. When I'm doing a full mix on here, I actually have a stand and it sits kind of in there like that and it can hold it itself. When I'm doing smaller mixes, obviously the drill bit isn't long enough, so I just kind of have to get in there and do it. Um, it's designed for mixing up plaster, so it's got a really, really high torque rating, which is good It's got a number of speed settings as well. So the idea is you put the water in up to the level that you want, you add the sugar in, and then you're constantly kind of mixing with this as well. We give it like 3 or 4 blasts, a couple of minutes at a time. That seems to do it. So you just start adding the sugar. You want to add about 10 kilos before you kind of get in there, give it its first mix. So you get your drill in, turn it on. Showing you how quick it goes. You get that in, start stirring. Start adding some more sugar in. Go back in with the drill. So it's actually a big bit of a big. Mix than I was expecting. So what I normally do is I use the lid, it's got a hole in it, or you can just stick a couple of bits of wood over the top like that, and then it makes it so much easier because you can just put the drill on to run, chuck the sugar in down the hole, and you haven't got to kind of stop and start it the whole time. This is a much, much easier way of doing it. Like I say, when I'm doing a full 200-liter drum of syrup, I always set it up like this way, get the water right up, and then do this from the beginning. It means you literally never even have to hold the drill at all. So I'll do this for the rest of the video, and then you can kind of see both ways. So turn it on. So you just want to make sure you're getting it all at the bottom, so I'll give it a couple of goes just to get it right, kind of get the sugar work up, make sure there's no crust forming at the bottom, but never normally is, but you know what I mean, just get in there, make sure it's all working well. So that was absolutely fine, there was no crust at all forming at the bottom. Now with 1:1 syrup, that would probably be it, most of the sugar would be dissolved into the water now and you'd have 1:1 syrup. But I always just kind of, just to be on the safe side, give it quite a lot longer. So I just set this up now, leave it for 10 minutes, and I come back and then it never looks clear, so you always kind of think it needs longer. But what it is, is there's loads of air incorporated into it. So give it, give it 10 minutes and let it settle for, say, half an hour. You'll come back, it'll be perfectly clear. So the syrup's now settled for about half an hour. Um, And as you can see, it's pretty much clear. You've still got kind of a few suspended air bubbles in there, but there's absolutely no sediment at the bottom, and that's what you're looking for. So that is kind of 2:1 syrup made only using sugar, water, and a drill. Absolutely no heat whatsoever. So just a few things to say about this method. It's a lot easier using 25 kilogram sacks of sugar. I couldn't get them. I needed this at short notice because I'm making up some, some pollen patties. So like I say, 25 kilogram bags make that a whole lot easier. That's how I drill the top of the container. So I normally put a hole in it like that. I put a couple of pieces of wood underneath it, and then I set the drill on top, which means that I can access and just chuck the bags in as the drill's going. Another important thing to remember is always fill the water up before you add the sugar. If you add the sugar first, or you add too much sugar, it can settle at the bottom and then it kind of creates additional work for you. So always add the correct amount of sugar first. These lines on the barrel here, they indicate to me how much water I need to add. So if you want to measure precise amounts and then Draw the lines on or do on the inside, you can do that. It's just a really easy way of kind of not having to measure the water out each time you do it. Another thing to remember is you want to kind of hit it maybe in 3 stints. So whiz it all up, let it settle, give it 5 to 10 minutes, whiz it again, let it settle. Do that 3 or 4 times as opposed to just letting it run for 20 minutes. You're less likely to burn out the motor. But these, these drills, they really are designed of handle a lot of torque, so that shouldn't be an issue anyway. But the big one for me to remember is that there's a lot of air, you're putting a lot of air in, so it looks like the sugar's not dissolving properly. So just kind of bear that in mind that there is kind of air encapsulated in that. So what you're looking for is to do a test like that and see that there's no sediment at the bottom. There still will be a little bit of air incorporated within the syrup, so that's absolutely So the reason I'm doing this today is that my colonies, as you've seen on previous videos, are really struggling in terms of protein content within the hive. So what I'm doing is I'm mixing up my own patties using a purpose bee feed formulation. So I'm using a product called Bee Pro from Mann Lake, or Bee Equipment UK in this country, and the recipe that they recommend is a 2:1 sugar syrup and the pre-mixed powder. So I'm going to do a separate video on that, so stay tuned for that. That's coming up very, very shortly. All I'll do in that is I'll kind of put the sugar syrup into some buckets, add the BeePro, and then I use the same mixer, the same kind of drill paddle, just to mix that up. And then I apply that to my hives. So you'll see that on 2 separate videos. I'm doing another video on how to make the pollen patties, which is BeePro plus the sugar syrup that I've got here. And then I'll do a final video which on how to apply those pollen patties to the hive. There's a kind of specific way you need to apply them in order for the bees to be able to access them and you don't make too much of a mess. So that's it for the video today, pretty quick video again just showing you kind of how to make sugar syrup using only sugar, cold water, and a paddle drill. Absolutely no heating involved, there's going to be no HMF created through this method, which is an issue that could be caused using a heating method. You don't need a big oil drum in order to do this, you can do this kind of in a bucket, so it's scalable down to pretty much any size. You could do it with a whisk or a stick or something if you want to kind of stand there and put that kind of blood and sweat into it, maybe not some blood, but put the energy into it to kind of whisk that sugar up. It will dissolve eventually, but it's quite hard work, so I do recommend kind of some form of mechanical Stirrer, but like a hand blender, if you're only kind of making up 2 or 3 litres of syrup, a hand blender would do it, or like a whisk, or you can be imaginative in terms of what mechanical device you use. But I guess the message that I'm trying to put across is that if you're not going to use a specially formulated invert syrup and you want to use sugar, this is the method to use. Really, I would steer away from kind of any heating of of that sugar creates HMF. It's not good for your bees. But the, the big reason that I use this method is it comes down to cost. And that's not to say that I think I'm doing anything wrong by the bees. Like, I would never put any products anywhere near the hive that I thought were harmful for bees. But I just don't like spending a lot of money on a product that I think doesn't add any additional benefit. And that's the reason that I do it. So I've made Like 100 liters of syrup here, and it's cost me like 50 quid, whereas if I was going to buy 100 liters of syrup in, you're probably talking 200 quid. So you're saving maybe 75% of the cost buying a ready-made syrup. Now that cost, obviously the more syrup that you buy is going to go down drastically, and in the winter this year I am going to use a ready-made invert syrup. So I'm going to buy that in bulk. I'll probably buy 2,000 or 3,000 liters of it. And then there's obviously other savings that you get by buying syrup in bulk as well, buying a ready-made mix, and that is that you don't have to do this mixing, which when you're doing 2,000 or 3,000 litres of syrup can become a bit more time-consuming. So there are other benefits in there as well. Another big benefit to having a pre-mixed invert syrup is that it stays fresher a lot longer. So making up syrup like this, the syrup It does go off, so this is why I like to do it in an oil jug, so I'm not making huge batches of it at a time. I use— I make the syrup as and when it's required. So I've made this syrup here today. The, um, the pollen substitute's already here. I'm going to decant this syrup into buckets, straight into the pollen substrate onto the bees. It's going to be absolutely no wastage, and I'm not going to be storing this syrup because it will go off very, very quickly. So that's a point to note, is that don't make too much. You just You just want to make just the, just the amount that you need to feed at that point in time. And that's about it. So I hope you've enjoyed the video. Please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell. Weather, please get better because it's just windy and 3 or 4 degrees here today, so it's absolutely miserable in North Wales at the moment. Um, so yeah, so if we can do a bit of a crazy weather dance to get the season going, it'd be much appreciated. So thanks again, and I'll see you next time.