How much bakers fondant to leave on?

I have never had to use Fondant, but I may have to on my bought in colonies which weigh in at 65lbs, but they are not as strong as by own stock.

MikeT said:

I have never had to use Fondant, but I may have to on my bought in colonies which weigh in at 65lbs, but they are not as strong as by own stock.

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Is that weight for a cedar single brood chamber standard deep, floor, brood box and crown board?

Karsal - great idea. Any chance of a photo please?

oliver90owner said:

A full super of honey and whatever is in the brood box may see you through to Christmas quite nicely.

I hope you jest. That is ridiculous. The brood box should be full in the autumn. That alone should get them well past Christmas! 20kg is the normal recommendation. A further 10kg should get them itno spring brooding. Of course, there are exceptions, but suggesting a brood box and super is only sufficient until Christmas is OTT.

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Please listen to Rab, he knows what he's talking about.
If you must add fondant at this early juncture, Karsal's method works well.

The disadvantage of overfeeding will be too much left in the way of stores in the Spring and not enough laying space. Much harder to deal with then.
I seriously doubt that your bees need fondant now.

Cazza

Karsal said:

I to have 2 P!"£$s poly hives and the bees seem to be doing well. However I have used a super as an eke and inside on top of the crown board 50mm of kingspan. Fits nice and snug.
I have cut a rectangular hole over the centre hole in the crown board the size of the sandwich box and placed a cheap pound shop sandwich box with 1kg of fondant and a hole that marries up with the hole on the crown board.
The bees have consumed all the fondant in both hives and are now on their second lot. Easy to see when empty and easy to replace without breaking the seal on the crown board.
If this set up works I'll be pleased and the bees will be well fed.

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I do exactly the same and it has worked fine for me the last 2-3 winters.




These were taken a couple of years ago. I now use wrapped insulation as one time I had mice chewing through the insulation in spring.

Lift the roof and you can immediately check if they have used all the fondant and it's quick and easy to replace with another full 'takeaway' carton.

I do exactly the same and it has worked fine for me the last 2-3 winters.

Me too, for about the last ten years (or more) at a guess. Not in 14 x12s with a full brood box of stores and not needed to feed much this last 5 yesrs or so. Most certainly not strong colonies!

Not a lot of joined up thinking by some posters.

oliver90owner said:

Which book?

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the book that one of my local beekeeping groups reads from and then write on their info display boards that bees must be fed in spring and for the winter..

... but I may have to on my bought in colonies which weigh in at 65lbs, but they are not as strong as by own stock....

Mike T

I'm happy to overwinter my Nationals at 60 lbs for floor, broodbox and crownboard ...are you including Super/roof/stand?

richard

Yes mines just the same as YorkshireBees. Easy to see when used up by the bees and quickly replaced.

Karsal said:

I to have 2 P!"£$s poly hives and the bees seem to be doing well. However I have used a super as an eke and inside on top of the crown board 50mm of kingspan. Fits nice and snug.
I have cut a rectangular hole over the centre hole in the crown board the size of the sandwich box and placed a cheap pound shop sandwich box with 1kg of fondant and a hole that marries up with the hole on the crown board.
The bees have consumed all the fondant in both hives and are now on their second lot. Easy to see when empty and easy to replace without breaking the seal on the crown board.
If this set up works I'll be pleased and the bees will be well fed.

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Good to hear of someone else doing this. I know the favourite method is to place fondant directly on the topbars, but I have been using a method very similar to the above for a couple of years now - for emergency feeding, using home-made fondant (and what a hassle that is to make, in serious quantities ... ). But this year, for the first time I'll be using Bako's finest, instead.

All my crown boards have 4 x 50mm holes (nucs, 2 x 50mm) to take inverted-jar syrup feeders. With the jar lids removed and replaced by slashed plastic film (ex-freezer bags), these jars can then be used to feed fondant instead of syrup. The insulation around and on top of the jars stays exactly the same.

As Karsal points out - there's no need to crack open the crown board at any time, and the amount of fondant remaining is easily and quickly seen.

LJ

"Hi, my local apiary lays strips of fondant across the tops of the frames which i tried last year. It worked ok ish but when i tried to administer oxalic acid by dribbling it in the seams any remaining fondant had to be scraped off first."

most would add the fondant immediately after the oxalic!

drstitson said:

most would add the fondant immediately after the oxalic!

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If waiting until then the bees may of already died of starvation, if they had not already been given the emergency feed.

But surely colonies are very unlikely to have run our of stores by 3rd week in december so putting fondant on after oxalic seems to be a reasonable approach. If fed properly in september then most colonies don't really need topping up with fondant.

masterBK said:

But surely colonies are very unlikely to have run our of stores by 3rd week in december so putting fondant on after oxalic seems to be a reasonable approach.

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I agree, you would think so, but reading this forum it looks like some have already started emergency fondant feeding.

It worked ok ish but when i tried to administer oxalic acid by dribbling it in the seams any remaining fondant had to be scraped off first."

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And this one obviously was.

Hivemaker. said:

I agree, you would think so, but reading this forum it looks like some have already started premature emergency fondant feeding.

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Fixed that for you …

Why call it "emergency fondant feeding"? If it gets your colony through winter no matter how harsh then alls good.

Hivemaker. said:

I agree, you would think so, but reading this forum it looks like some have already started emergency fondant feeding.
And this one obviously was.

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In Britain winter feeding was finished about 2 months ago, and are hives now starving?

In Finland hives must be feeded before half of September. Then hives must be alone in peace to next March. It is 6 months.

After 6 months consumption hives should have still 10 kg food up to May.
That is possible when we have insulated hive WALLS.

As important thing as insulation is that our bee strains must be such that they stop brood rearing in proper time. If the colony has brooding whole autumn, it will die before December. So it is away from local genepool.
For example New Zealand italian package bees do not survive over our winter.

We cannot feed fondant to bees during winter because bees do not get drinking water from November to March.

Finman said:

In Britain winter feeding was finished about 2 months ago, and are hives now starving?

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Sounds like some are near to it........http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=32044

.
I have noticed that many beeks are fond of feeding hives during winter, spring, summer, autumn and what ever to "encourage" bees to better life.
Mostly result is stucked hive and swarming.

If you feed too much winter food, you are in trouple in spring when colony needs free space for pollen and brood. It is like quarantee that you get early swarms and you loose best part of colony.

But surely colonies are very unlikely to have run our of stores by 3rd week in december-

Here lies one of the problems. We have one reply saying a brood box with super of stores will only last until Christmas. Now another saying the above ( in bold).

When will they ever learn that beekeeping is NOT carried out by the calender. Beekeeping is about to OBSERVATION! Yes, simple observations at that. Get it right in the first place and, as Finman says, leave them in peace for the quiescent months of colder winter weather. Simple beekeeping - leave them alone unless they need help. Dont interfere unnecessarily.

Most of the above shows that many UK beekeepers just get it completely wrong in the autumn? Finman keeps it simple; feed sufficiently (appropriately) at the proper time and the bees will look after themselves for the winter months. In his case best part of 6 months, yet many UK beekeepers cannot leave the them alone for two months, let alone four or six. If we in the UK had to over-winter for six months, I hate to think of the problems some would have!