bee sugar patties — Beekeeping

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

One of the recipes I like to make for my honeybees is sugar patties. They serve to absorb moisture inside the hive in winter and, when placed correctly, can supplement honey when stores run out.

After breaking my dominant right wrist September 2015, I knew I couldn't stir the wet sugar to make the patties. Enter my beekeeping friend David who one day in November showed up with pie tins full of sugar patties for my girls.

"Let them dry out for a couple of days," he said, stacking them on my garage work table.

My stack of winter sugar patties ready to place in hives.

Some beekeepers object to feeding bees anything additional over winter. Having lost one colony to winter starvation, I prefer to give them the sugar patties so they don't starve. They will eat honey first so the sugar patties are for when they run out.

To make sure they can access it, the sugar patties have to be placed over the cluster, which may or may not be in the center of the hive.