"Bill Truesdell" wrote:
> It is a good supplemental feed and my guess is, for
> those who feed it in the fall, it does not come into play until the late
> winter/early spring if the bees went into the winter with normal stores.

> Plus, fondant is more expensive than either sugar syrup or HFCS. It
> makes little sense to use it as a fall feed


If fed early, the bees store it as they would sugar syrup.  Fed later, they
do not take it down, but eat up into it as required - leaving the brood nest
open for late breeding and storage of nectar from late flows.  Yes, it is
more expensive than sugar, but for me it has the huge advantage of saving
time.  I do not have the time or facilities to mix sufficient sugar syrup
for 200 colonies, nor do I relish transporting that much syrup to
out-apiaries, but I can order fondant when I am ready to feed and get the
delivery within a week.  A pallet load of 12.5kg boxes of fondant is
transferred from the tail lift of the delivery vehicle to my trailer and I
can then feed all my colonies easily in 2-3 days.  As fondant can be fed at
any time through the winter, there is no hurry to get feeding finished by
the traditional 2nd week in September (so that the bees can invert and store
the sugar syrup) and, because it is easy to top up in the early spring,
there is no need to 'over-feed' - most of  my colonies get only 8kg of
fondant in the autumn and most do not require spring feeding.
As far as I know, HFCS is not used in the UK.

Peter Edwards
[log in to unmask]
www.stratford-upon-avon.freeserve.co.uk/

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