Invert vs Syrup - APIMIX

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today we're going to discuss the differences between invert sugar syrup and 2:1 sugar syrup made using granulated sugar. So you'll see in my previous videos I make a lot of sugar syrup. So I make 1:1 sugar syrup in the spring, I make 2:1 sugar syrup in the autumn to feed my colonies up, I feed my bees fondant, I also feed my bees invert sugar syrup. So I just wanted to kind of give you a video to discuss and talk to you about the differences between these products, when I use them throughout the beekeeping season, and what product you should use at home to feed your bees. So the first thing to say is there are differences between all of those sugar syrups. In terms of the composition and in terms of when you should use them throughout the season. So if you were to read the beekeeping textbooks, it says give 1:1 sugar syrup in the spring, give 2:1 sugar syrup in the autumn for winter feeding. You can give invert sugar syrup also for kind of winter feeding, and then fondant is obviously when the bees can no longer take down the sugar syrup, but they might need an emergency feed. We'll cover that in a separate video. The differences that I want to talk about today though are kind of myth-busting a little bit some of those facts about when to feed 1:1 syrup and when to feed 2:1 syrup. So I've got colonies where I've fed them 2:1 syrup in the spring and that boosts them for brood rearing. They don't just kind of take that syrup and say, okay, well, that's 2:1 syrup, I'm just going to store that. When the colony is rapidly expanding, they'll take down that carbohydrate, they'll build wax, they'll break it down and kind of mix it with water to give them the kind of feed that they need in order to boost the colonies. So I just want to do a little bit of kind of myth-busting there. You don't necessarily need to feed 1:1 in the spring in order to get your colonies to grow, but what you definitely don't want to do is feed 1:1 in the autumn because it gives the bees too much work in order to get that moisture content down so they can overwinter successfully on it. And that leads me a little bit to this video really. I won't deny it at all, I really didn't used to be a fan of invert syrup like this, and the main reason was because it was way more expensive than mixing up my own granulated mix in a 2:1 formula for winter feeding. That was the only reason that I really didn't like it. But kind of through trial and error over the past few seasons, I've done a complete 180, and I think now the best formula syrup to overwinter your bees on is an invert syrup like this. So this one here I got from a guy down at Happy Valley Honey. So it's the kind of the honey business for modern beekeeping, guy called Paul Beardmore. He sold me this. This is the Appy Mix, and I bought 1,200 kilos of it. You can see it on their website, so if you're interested in this mix, This is a really, really good formula. I'll be feeding all of my colonies on this formula going into winter. So you might kind of think, why, why the sudden change in direction? And why are you feeding syrup now after you've done loads of videos on how to mix up sugar syrup? And it's not as straightforward as that. So what I'm doing now is I'm moving forward with the last, very last feed of the season for all of the colonies is going to be an invert syrup. And there's loads of different invert syrups on the market. I mean, there's kind of Appy Mix and loads of different types of invert. This one here is the Appy Mix by Zucan Feeds. It's got a really high specific gravity, so lots of good sugar in there. And then obviously you get all of the micronutrients and vitamins that isn't present in the 2:1. So I do think it has a little bit of a benefit in terms of kind of the nutritional content, not so much in terms of the calorific content, but it's got those enzymes. And it's got the nutrients to make it slightly healthier for bees. I don't have the research kind of to hand to back up those claims, but I know that it's contained within the syrup, so that's all I'm telling you here. The other big, big benefit to using an invert syrup over a kind of granulated sugar mix is that you know what that HMF content of that sugar is. HMF is a toxic chemical that can be released when you heat up sugar, And if you make sugar syrup wrong, so you kind of boil it or you do something wrong to it, you can increase the amount of HMF that's in that syrup, and then it can be potentially toxic to your bees. So by buying a kind of proprietary product like this, you're safe in the knowledge that it's going to have the correct amount of sugar, it's not going to have any nasties, and it's going to have the vitamins as well. So going back to my, my kind of comments about when and where I would feed them going forward, my process is going to be In the spring, I will make up my own sugar syrup, making sugar, and I'll use kind of my paddle drill. I'll make a nice easy 1:1 sugar syrup because it's quick, it's cheap, and I know the bees are going to use that syrup immediately and they're going to turn it into brood. They're not going to store it. I've got no issues with kind of storage or fermentation. They're going to use it straight away. In August time, once I've taken the honey off my colonies and I've got my treatments in, I like to do a round of feeding up here in North Wales to get the colonies big and strong. Now if I was going to use Api-Invert for that or Api-Mix, it would just be a waste because I'd come back in kind of October, November and all of that syrup, that invert syrup, would have disappeared and it would have been replaced with brood and bees. So it's not a kind of good return on my investment. So going forward, my August feeds, my early autumn, late summer feeds, will be granulated sugar mix. I'll make that up into a 2:1 mix. But then, and this is the difference that I'm bringing in this year, is that the last feed that I'm doing, kind of around kind of early to middle of October here in North Wales, I'm going to use an invert syrup. And I mean, I like the one that Paul's given me here, the Api-Mix. It's close by for me, so I save on delivery charges by going to Paul at Modern Beekeeping. And that's what I'm going to do. And the reason that I'm going to use that invert late in the season is for a few reasons. One, I'm going to have the nutritional content of the enzymes and the vitamins that's present in this mix. I'm not too fussed about the HMF content of sugar syrup because I know how to make sugar syrup with no HMF or very little HMF being formed. And I do that using kind of like a cold tepid water method. So there's no heating whatsoever. So I'm safe in the knowledge that my sugar syrup is very, very low in HMF, although it's not been tested. The next one though, and probably the most important one, is that when the bees take down the invert syrup late on in the season, they don't have to invert it themselves. So if they're taking down kind of a granulated 2:1 sugar syrup mix, they need to invert that in their kind of bodies and then store it as an inverted syrup. And I find that the bees, especially in North Wales, if you do that too late on in the year, they can turn down the 2:1 syrup. Whereas, as in, they won't go into the feeders and they won't take it out and you're left with syrup in your feeders. With the invert syrup, I've never found that. They go in and they clean up every last morsel of this syrup and they bring it back down for storage. Which leads me on to the final benefit of this syrup, is that once they take it down and they store it in the frames, they don't need to waste energy evaporating the moisture. It's at the correct moisture content, ready For storage, and even more importantly than that is they don't need to cap it over with wax, because capping it over with wax takes up quite a lot of energy from the colony, so I'm losing a bit of efficiency there. But also, I mean, to create that wax they need warmth, and when I'm feeding them in the middle of October, I've got no warmth to play with up here in North Wales. I mean, it's single figures in the day and it's probably down to kind of like 2 or 3 degrees at night. The bees have already started to cluster. They're not going to look at capping over stores that I'm giving them. And then that leads me to the final one, which is it's not going to ferment. So it's at the correct moisture content, it's at the correct sugar content, it's not going to ferment in the frames, which can cause issues with dysentery. So they're the reasons that I'm moving over to kind of an appy mix or an invert sugar syrup for my last feed. And I'll hold my hands up, I mean, last year I wasn't going down this route. I've previously said I'll always feed kind of a granulated sugar syrup mix that I'll make up myself, and that was purely due to the fact that the cost benefits of making syrup do stack up when you're feeding a lot of colonies. But I'm more than happy to hold my hands up and say I think I got that one wrong, and going forward, this is how I'm going to manage it. So like I said, I'll summarize that again. Early feeding, I'm going to use a 1:1 sugar syrup mix that I'm going to make myself. Late summer feeding, when I'm trying to build up those colonies, I'm trying to turn sugar syrup into bees. I'm going to mix up a 2:1 syrup and I'm going to get the bees to kind of draw out all of that comb, turn it into bees, turn it into brood. So I've got big bustling colonies kind of late September. And then once the ivy flow is finished and I'm confident that the bees aren't going to be getting out anymore, then I'm going to go in really, really heavy with Invert syrup, get them to pull that down, bring the colonies up to weight. So you can buy this invert syrup in loads of different kind of formulations. There are a lot of different kind of products on the market. You can buy it as an IBC like that, so kind of like a full tank of it. That's 1,200 kilos, about 900 litres, I think. You can buy it in single jerry cans, but then obviously it adds to the additional money. You can buy it if you want to buy 5 or 6 IBCs full. You can get a tanker to come and pump it out. That's definitely the cheapest way to do it. All of the syrups on the market though, they do, I mean, they do a very, very similar job. I can recommend this syrup. I've used this syrup before and it's a really, really good syrup. And the company, Modern Beekeeping, Happy Valley Honey, really good company to work with. They turn around the deliveries in a very good time and you can go and collect it as well. So if you live local to them, you can save on the cost of delivery. So it's a bit heavy, this bucket. This is what the syrup looks like. It's kind of like an amber Looks remarkably like honey, to be honest. Specific gravity of around 1.4, so that means for every 100 litres it's going to weigh about 140 kilograms. The bees take it down so, so well. You'll see them kind of licking it clean. In your feeders, if they're not taking it down very well, what you can do is you can remove the plastic insert, give the bees full access to the feeder, and then chuck loads of hay in. That's a really good tip I've learned. Makes them clean up every last drop and it stops them drowning. And finally, just don't leave it too late to get your colonies fed up to weight. We're going to do a separate video on weighing your colonies, adding the invert syrup, checking that they're at the correct weight, and trying to get that timing right to coincide with the end of the nectar flow, the end of the ivy flow. There's no point pumping this syrup in for overwintering if you don't need to. So we'll follow this video up with a couple of separate videos. Like I say, we'll do, we'll do a feeding to weight and a timing video. But I just wanted to do a quick video showing you the change in my strategy in terms of feeding and what I'm using for my late season feeds going forward. So that's it for the video. I hope you found this one useful. I mean, as always, come back to me with kind of any questions you've got, what you're feeding your colonies, and any recommendations. But finally, I'll say it again, Modern Beekeeping do a really, really good line of invert sugar syrup mix called Api-Mix, and I'd highly recommend their product. I've paid for this product. It's not a freebie. I'm not kind of saying it because he's given me something for free. I've paid for this product and I'll be using it on my bees. I only got it from that company because they're the closest company for me and I saved quite a lot on the shipping by going and collecting it in person. So as always, thanks for watching. Please hit the subscribe button. Please hit the bell so you're notified of every video and I'll see you next time.