Murray & I have been chatting privately and -- since it seems that some of
this info will interest list members -- I am forwarding some of it to
BEE- L -- FYI.
AD >I have heard good things about fondant. I gather you buy it from
>confectionners or some such source?. Are there any problems at all with
>impurities and or the heat used in candying the sugar? Or am I maybe
>misunderstanding what it is? I've been told that it comes in blocks and
>that one merely slices off what is required. True?
>
>I have some light hives that may need a little supplement in March and
>was thinking fondant at the time of adding patties might be the answer.
>Hope you can shed a bit more light on this.
MM >The fondant we use is a mechanically manufactured paste, set solid, of
icing sugar and glucose and invert syrups. It is VERY VERY important that
you ascertain that what you are getting contains no ingredients derived
from acid inversion processes, otherwise dysentry is the result. We demand
it in writing at the start of every fondant using season. There have been
disasters in the past. Bakery supplies companies are the best source for
it here, as bakeries use it for making icing.
It comes in 28lb blocks, inside plastic bags, inside a cardboard carton.
We cut it into 7lb (approx) blocks, each is then placed inside a high
density poly bag, the neck twisted tight then sealed. My two men can cut
and bag a tonne (320 blocks) in about an hour but it did take them a while
to arrive at this technique using a bucket of hot water and a new garden
spade. You can store it cut and bagged like this for months if need be
until required in the field.
On arrival at the bees you decide how many blocks are needed to span the
cluster so that each seam of bees is in contact with the fondant. You take
a sharp knife and slash two parallel cuts across one face of the fondant
bag, peel back the strip of polythene, and place the fondant down on top
of the cluster. It is important that the cut is running across and not
along the top bars, and that sufficient blocks (always either 1 or 2) are
put on so that the whole viable cluster is spanned. The correct time to do
it is just when the cluster has eaten its way up sufficiently to begin
arriving at the top bars. However, you could just as easily put on a
sufficient number of blocks (probably 2 to 4) now and just leave them to
it till spring. You have far colder winters than us and doing this could
be better as you will not need to go into them in freezing conditions.
Watch out in spring though! It does get them going a bit and they can
catch you out by drawing wild comb up in the head space, plus, the candy
bags are a nice warm insulating layer for the bees and the like to draw
little bits of comb inside them as they clean them out (which they do
beautifully : there is almost no waste), and it is amazing how often you
can find the queen running about inside the bag. You really do need to
watch out for that when removing the bags. Several years ago we used to
use pollen supplement patties and we just put them on at the same time as
feeding fondant, and it seemed to work fine.
Bagging the fondant is important as it prevents it drying out and
becoming difficult for the bees to use.
<snip>
AD >I'm still having a little trouble visualizing the dimesions of the
>blocks before and after they are cut. I guess that this will be obvious
>when I get some, but for now, I wonder if you can give me rough
>dimensions... and an idea of what type of cover or lid you place over
>top, if any. I trust your hives are wrapped? Maybe not. Pictures of
>mine in winter and spring may be seen at:
>http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee/spring.htm
>
>I'm also thinking that some of this fondant information might be of
>interest to BEE-L readers and if I might excerpt this interchange for a
>BEE-L post?
MM>The fondant blocks in our normal use are 31cm long by 16 cm wide and
are 17.5 cm deep and weigh 12.5kg. You can cut this up as you see fit and
dimensions of cut blocks are up to you. The product is not hard (some
batches are actually pretty soft, but the bees don't mind) and the cut
blocks can be squeezed into the shape you need.
We are also experimenting with a 15kg block from Germany this year which
is supposed to be a special balanced formula specially devised for bees.
It is about 5cm longer and 4 cm wider, but 2cm less deep.
The normal type has about 78% solids, and the German stuff 82%.
We do not wrap for winter here, our RECORD cold is only about -22 deg C
(twice this century!), and average winter temperatures are actually
slightly above zero. We can get long freezing spells but they are a
rarity. We also get relatively low snowfall locally as this is one of
the driest parts of Scotland. To get a snowfall of over 6 inches would
be something that happens once or twice in a 5 year period, and it
normally melts in a few days. Winters tend to be long, grey, and dismal
( come to think of it, that also describes summer 98).
Hence feeding fondant throughout the winter is not a major trouble. Mud
in access tracks is our biggest difficulty. We just put the fondant as
previously described down in our selected place(s) on the top bars, add
some box on top of the brood nest, be it an empty super, upturned hive
top feeder, spare brood body, or whatever. We then just leave it like
that with the crown board and roof as the only other covering. We also
have some we are trying with covering over the fondant and top bars with
a double thickness of bubble wrap to give insulation and keep more
warmth in. The fondant is of course already covered by being bagged.
The Danes I visited 'tent' it with a single sheet of heavy guage
polythene larger than the hive top area so that it is held down over
fondant by the weight of the empty box, roof etc. This prevents the
drawing of wild comb in the head space in spring, but also acts as a
heat trap. I worry about condensation using polythene/bubble wrap,
especially in the wooden hives. They are using mainly polystyrene or
polyurethane hives with screened floors and claim that condensation is
not a problem.
As you can see the blocks are not all that large physically. Some
people, especially in Europe, feed no syrup at all and just invert a
whole carton of fondant over the cluster (it needs an empty brood body
to accommodate that) and don't look near the bees till spring. It seems
to work for them but we find that it gives many colonies far too much
and leads to waste.
It works for us though, and saves us worrying about having
to get syrup into them by a certain time because it can be done at any
stage of the winter. Try a few only though, because your climatic
factors could produce very contrasting results.
I'm going off to look at your winter pictures. We are going to have a
site of our own soon and I'll get some photos of ours posted up there...
By all means use this on Bee-L...
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