Using Recycled Suet Holders for Sugar Patties

Most bird suet is packed in clear plastic containers that can easily be recycled.

I stumbled on this idea but it turned out to be a good one.

I had just dried several clear plastic suet containers to save flower seeds from my garden in later. I like the size because I can line them up on a cookie sheet and easily keep my drying seeds separated.

As I remembered my beekeeping friend David was going to have eye surgery, I decided to make sugar patties for late winter feeding in case it was necessary. David had kept my bees in winter food last fall after I had broken my right wrist so this was a good opportunity to return the favor.

David's recipe was for pie tin size sugar patties. After a little trial and error, I came up with the right combination of sugar and water so the patties dried out enough to be moved but were not so dry to make it difficult for bees to eat it.

The recycled clear suet containers came in handy to hold the sugar patties.

After a couple of days sitting in my oven to dry, the sugar patties were ready to provide late winter food to David's colonies. 

Here is one of the sugar patties David made in a pie tin for my bees:

Bees eat sugar late winter when they run out of honey supplies.

Either container will work, the bees don't seem to prefer one container over the other. The advantage of the suet containers is that they can easily be stacked against one another for easy storage.

Charlotte