ambrosia bee fondant

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steve's bees

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north yorkshire
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Can anybody tell me if there is any thing special in it for bees that will be better than bakers fondant or home made bee fondant. I have a recipe and it takes minutes to make, it feels and looks the same and loads cheaper.
Is it rip off beeks again!:rolleyes:

Steve
 
hi I would like that recipe please, if more experienced give it the say so.
 
1kg sugar
300ml water
25g glucose

watch this it realy is this easy [ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KyJOM0pejw[/ame]
 
Can anybody tell me if there is any thing special in it for bees that will be better than bakers fondant or home made bee fondant. I have a recipe and it takes minutes to make, it feels and looks the same and loads cheaper.
Is it rip off beeks again!:rolleyes:

Steve

I was under the impression (having never used it) that Ambrosia is a trade name for an inverted sugar syrup feed for bees. What you have posted up is simply a YouTube video for making Baker's Fondant. So exactly what are you asking? You shouldn't be feeding syrup at this time anyway and I'm sure the makers of Ambrosia......which is probably a trade mark, wouldn't like their product name to be used in this way.

Frisbee
 
Ambrosia is a fondant. Can't see the point of paying it's price as making your own is easy if you only have a few hives.
 
Don't Ambrosia do both, syrup and fondant?
 
Great, easy to follow video.
Thanks Steve
 
Yes they do both and a friend of mine who is a very successful Bee Farmer swears by ambrosia syrup, one of the main advantages he says is there is no robbing issue and when you are dealing with 700 odd hives that is an issue potentially.

PH
 
Ambrosia is a fondant. Can't see the point of paying it's price as making your own is easy if you only have a few hives.

Ambrosia is actually just a collective brand name for the various bee feed products produced by Nordzucker in Germany.

They have syrups, fondants, and powders.

Similarly the bigger brother and market leader in the trade, Sudzucker, make Apiinvert, Apifonda,and Apipuder.

Other sugar companies have a similar assortment. Most fondant is made by Sudzucker or their subsidiaries, or by Belgosuc, and just packaged in the branding of other companies. (I have visited two plants in Belgium, one of which is a Sudzucker plant making most of the fondant brands sold in the UK which you might think to be British makes, and seen that happening) The difference between Ambrosia fondant and Apifonda, at least at the time I visited the plant, was nothing more than which roll of plastic preprinted film they had on the machine.

The specialist bee fondants do vary slightly from the standard bakers fondant, being manufactured in such a way as to have a smaller crystal size. the theory is that this aids direct ingestion rather than reconstitue to liquid then ingest. The way in which we feed fondant in this country, and the climate, probably mean that the extra money is not worth paying. ( have used many tonnes over the years of standard bakers white fondant and special formula types............not a scrap of a difference )

Getting a box or two of white fondant from your local bakery, or from their wholesaler, is the easiest and usually most economic way to go for small purchasers. Making it yourself? Well their are plenty of anecdotes about it being just as good, but I remain unconvinced of this. Hmf in home made product is always a risk, and hmf is toxic to bees, albeit that in fondant it will be at modest levels. Bees will tolerate it and prosper most seasons, but, if it ever does, your trouble will come in a cold winter with a long period with no flight.
 
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FWIW I asked my local baker to buy in three boxes for me from Bako as they are very keen to get rid of small orders like mine, and they charged me £11=33 per box. 12.5kg per box.

KISS

PH
 
There are a few issues that are not being considered.

If you buy Ambrosia you have a finished product ready to use.

If you make your own you have to cost your time, your power and the clean up time too. Now the figures look a bit different hmm?


Well I did say 'if you only have a few hives'. I don't cost my time in as this is a hobby to me and I don't think the gas I use really makes a significant difference to my bill, but I take your point, on a larger scale it is a different matter.
 
Can anybody tell me if there is any thing special in it for bees that will be better than bakers fondant or home made bee fondant. I have a recipe and it takes minutes to make, it feels and looks the same and loads cheaper.
Is it rip off beeks again!:rolleyes:

Steve

It does make you wonder why these companies spend all that money on research and testing, laying out a fortune on staff training, packaging, infrastructure, offices, factories when beekeepers can knock their own up and the bees will survive anyway. :roll eyes:

It is becoming cheaper as producers realise some large scale concerns have duped them into believing they want to be suppliers in the UK and elsewhere when in fact they have no intention of doing so.
 
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It is becoming cheaper as producers realise some large scale concerns have duped them into believing they want to be suppliers in the UK and elsewhere when in fact they have no intention of doing so.

I think you will find that what has happened in the bee feed trade is that some individuals have approached the big bee feed producing companies in Europe and arranged to become agents or wholesalers in order to get the best possible price. Some of these people plainly only wanted cheapest product for themselves and had no real intention of becoming a reseller. They either refuse or put a price on the product that means if someone does buy they make a killing.

You also have a situation in play with Ambrosia (and possibly other products too) that is not entirely dissimilar to pyramid marketing. The maker appoints a main distributor. The main distributor appoints sub distributors. The sub distributors appoint either further sub distributors or end vendors. At the 'plankton' end of the food chain you have the small user. They are 3 to 4 significant margins removed from manufacturing cost.
 
I think you will find that what has happened in the bee feed trade is that some individuals have approached the big bee feed producing companies in Europe and arranged to become agents or wholesalers in order to get the best possible price. Some of these people plainly only wanted cheapest product for themselves and had no real intention of becoming a reseller. They either refuse or put a price on the product that means if someone does buy they make a killing.

You also have a situation in play with Ambrosia (and possibly other products too) that is not entirely dissimilar to pyramid marketing. The maker appoints a main distributor. The main distributor appoints sub distributors. The sub distributors appoint either further sub distributors or end vendors. At the 'plankton' end of the food chain you have the small user. They are 3 to 4 significant margins removed from manufacturing cost.
I think that,s called to many middle men
 
And who in buisness is likely to go to the trouble of importing a product,storing it ect,and then selling it on for exactly the same price they payed for it in the first place from the producer.
 
And who in buisness is likely to go to the trouble of importing a product,storing it ect,and then selling it on for exactly the same price they payed for it in the first place from the producer.

Sugar like other basics has become part of the global futures market .
La Grande Monopoly :cuss:
VM
 
What happened to feeding down in September and leaving stocks alone until March/April, I haven't used fondant in 40+ years of beekeeping, or have things radically changed now?
I used to have 250+ stocks and had a feeder on each 12 months of the year.
 
I think you will find that what has happened in the bee feed trade is that some individuals have approached the big bee feed producing companies in Europe and arranged to become agents or wholesalers in order to get the best possible price. Some of these people plainly only wanted cheapest product for themselves and had no real intention of becoming a reseller. They either refuse or put a price on the product that means if someone does buy they make a killing.

You also have a situation in play with Ambrosia (and possibly other products too) that is not entirely dissimilar to pyramid marketing. The maker appoints a main distributor. The main distributor appoints sub distributors. The sub distributors appoint either further sub distributors or end vendors. At the 'plankton' end of the food chain you have the small user. They are 3 to 4 significant margins removed from manufacturing cost.

ITLD:

That is what I said - are you tired?

You did say you were looking in to this matter - any news?
 

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