Should I Feed Bees Syrup - Feeding Colonies with Fondant - How to Feed Bees for Winter

I'm at the Abelo-sponsored apiary and I'm going to show you how to feed your colonies for winter using nothing but fondant. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Thanks to Abelo for sponsoring this apiary, sponsoring this video. I'll pop up an advert there, check out their polyhives, they are the best on the UK market. In this video, I'm going to show you how I'm going to Feed up these colonies for winter using nothing but icing fondant from Baco. So I've done this a few years in a row now, a few colonies. All I use to feed them up is baking fondant. Straightforward, simple baking fondant. No 1:1 sugar syrup, no 2:1 sugar syrup, no feeders. I'm just going to take a queen excluder, put a big 6 kilo slab of fondant on the top, and then I'll just keep on topping it on Until they no longer take it. And then when they no longer take it, I'll leave them between 6 and 8 kilos of fondant to overwinter on, and I'll just keep on checking that periodically throughout the year. It works surprisingly well. It's nowhere near as messy as sugar syrup. It reduces the risk of robbing, and it's really good for colonies like this where you can't get to them as often. And when the weather turns bad, you make sure that they've got enough stores to see them through When they're expanding into the winter brood period, and then also through the winter months. So let's get into the colonies and I'll set it all up. Right, excuse the cleaver, look a little bit aggressive. This is the fondant that I'm going to be using here, standard white baker's fondant. I get mine from Baco, but you can use any fondant, any beekeeping fondant, really doesn't matter. Not using protein patties, so exclude any products that have got protein in. You don't need protein at this time of year. You just want lots and lots of carbohydrate. I go for the cheapest one, nice, simple baker's fondant. So this is what the product looks like that I'm using here. Notice the expiry date on that, 9th of the 9th, 2020. It doesn't go off that quick and the bees certainly don't mind. As long as it tastes all right and smells all right and it's not started fermenting, it is good to use and the bees will break it down. Right, so let's get this colony set up for winter feeding just using fondant. Now, the Abello hives are really, really good when it comes to feeding fondant. The crown boards in all of the iterations of this hive work very, very well. All of them are compatible. If you're using it on the very, very old version that has 5 holes in the crown board, I just leave 4 of them closed and then just keep the one central hole open. You do actually get a little bit more flexibility with that one if the cluster moves around over winter, but for the purpose of this one, I'm just doing it with the central hole feeder. So at the moment I've got a central hole. You can see all of the bees down there. All I'm going to do is I'm just going to remove that ventilated plug and I'm just going to plonk a big slab of fondant on the top. Now, when you're normally doing this, I would suggest if you're feeding colonies up exclusively using fondant for winter, just stick the whole 12.5 kilo slab on. I'm going to cut it in half today because I'm just a little bit low and I'm waiting for an order to come in. But you're feeding them up, you need to get these colonies up to around 40 pounds including the frames, including the bees, including the store So 12.5 kilos, around 27 pounds, something like that. They will get through this and they will burn that off, and they'll probably need another one going into winter. So you really can't overdo this. It's not the same as topping it up over winter where they might need a kilo or two. I just stick it on big fat slab. That's all you need. Make sure it's still mushy. You can see there really nice mushy fondant. If it's rock solid, you're probably best off breaking it down, turning it into sugar syrup. As long as it's mushy though, you're good to go. Keep the blue plastic on, that helps keep it nice and moist as well, keeps it protected from the top. And then all you need to do, simple as this, put it over the hole, take that ventilated mesh out, give the bees access up into it, and that is the job complete. It is as simple as that. The easiest way to feed bees you can possibly find. So just for reference, I just want to give you a snapshot of the size of this colony first week of August. Probably over 3 or 4 frames. Let's get the crown board on now and get this colony fed. As I'm building this colony up for winter, I'm not looking to get any honey crop off this this year, so I'm going early with my mite treatments as well. And I'm going to cover this in a separate video, but I'm using Apivar first week of August, going to leave it in for 8 weeks, and then I will take it out. Really does pay to get your treatments in early though. So there we go, I've got the hole off now. You can see the Apivar in there as well. I'm just going to chop off a big old slab of that fondant, cut it straight in half, Plonk that on the top. There we go, nice big half slab of fondant. I'll peel back the paper just a little bit and I'll place that over the hole. Be careful not to place the plastic over the hole because you will starve the bees over winter. Try and get all the bees back down and then just place that over the hole. So that's what it should look like there. Just make sure that they've got access up into the fondant and you're not blocking it with the blue plastic. And they are good to go. So once you've got the colony to this position here, you can just build up the supers. I'm just storing a couple of empty supers here, but you need a minimum of one, and then you can just go on top with the roof. Just gives the bees space to store that fondant, and then all we're going to do next time is you're just going to come back, remove any plastic wrapping where they've eaten the fondant, stick another big slab on. You will be amazed how quickly a big colony gets through a slab of fondant like that. It's as simple as that. The colony is now set up for winter. So make sure you stay tuned to the series. We're gonna follow this one up probably every 2 or 3 weeks just to see how they're getting through that fondant there. And then we'll just continually add fondant until we bring the colony up to weight, and then they've got sufficient stores for winter. So I hope you enjoyed that video. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time. Bye.