Last fall, I was decorating my son's birthday cake and had a lot of
left-over icing.  Rather than throw it away, I asked the same question
about whether the bees would/could eat it.  After all, the main ingredients
are vegetable shortening (recommended in many of the recipes for tracheal
mite patties) and confectioners sugar (used for feeding).  I have one hive
in my backyard, so I squeezed a generous portion (about two pounds worth)
in fat strips around on the inner cover and put the top back on.  This
would have been mid to late September in northeast Ohio.  Free-standing
water was accessible.

Last year was a warm fall, so every once in a while I peeked under the
cover to see what they were doing.  The bees found it quickly enough and
spent some time nosing around.  There was even some evidence that they
started eating it.  (Pock marks in the strips of icing.)  However, after
several months on the hive most of the icing was still there.  The pock
marks never appeared to get much deeper than they were after the first two
weeks.  In late fall (just before Thanksgiving if I remember correctly), we
had a very warm day so I took the inner cover off and washed it clean.  The
bees never showed an adverse reaction that I could see, but they didn't
seem to like it as feed either.

Caveat 1:  This fall I fed sugar syrup through a hive-top feeder.  The bees
took in very little.  The syrup finally went bad in the feeder so I took it
off.  One potential conclusion is that my bees are turning up their noses
at all fall feed.  Fall flowers are plentiful in my immediate area.  They
might react differently if I'd done the icing experiment some other time of
year.

Caveat 2:  I make my own icing so I knew all the ingredients and could make
a reasonable bet on safety.  Icing from a bakery might have preservatives
or flavorings that could change the result.  I also did my test with the
left-over white icing - no colorings.

Mike Rossander



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