bees, drinking water from inside a hollow log hive

Making sugar syrup for your bees becomes necessary for several reasons. The seasonal dearth has arrived and the bees have very little foraging material.  A newly acquired wild captured swarm has been installed into a hive and the colony has nothing in there to help them get started.  Or you are transferring a nuc into the hive and still need to help the bees along.  In each of these cases, the bees are needing to be fed.  “Pampered” is what I like to refer it as.  They need a little TLC to have the energy to build their comb.  They can’t raise a brood or store their food until the comb is built.

Every year, I see the question of “How do I make the sugar syrup for my bees?” on the beekeeping sites on Facebook.  Now, some of the answers are highly technical.  Some are just down right mean.  All of us at one time were a new beekeeper (Newbee, NB) and I feel like this is a legitimate question.  It can be confusing if someone is talking to you at a techie level.  The math can be difficult at the techie level.  Books are better at explaining it,

I have come to understand via experience that making the sugar syrup for my bees does not HAVE to be exactly precise.  There are two basic formulas.  They are 1:1 and 2:1 .  This is read as “one to one ratio” or “two to one ratio”  The first number represents how much sugar you are using.  The second number is how much already boiled (still hot) water that you are using.  For example:  1 teaspoon of sugar to 1 teaspoon of the already boiled (still hot) water is a 1:1 ratio.  But this is just to demonstrate how the ratio works.

Also, it is widely taken for granted that 1 cup of sugar has the equivalent weight of water.  I know, I know… the two different methods of measurement are volume and weight.  I think this is where the techies on the social media sites get bent out of shape and think all of us should have, at the very least, taken the course called rocket science 101.  Trust me…. it does not have to be this difficult.  I have been making sugar syrup for my bees since 2018.  I have plenty of practice and none of our bees have filed a complaint about the quality of food I have offered to them. Just to be sure though, I weigh out the sugar to ten pounds using a scale and measure out the water using a 4 cup measuring cup.

A really easy way to remember the weight/volume measurements is by this old fashioned rhyme:  “A pint is a pound the world round.”   This works beautifully for calculating your water requirements as 5 pints = 10 cups.

1:1 formula for Spring time
10 cups boiling water
5 lbs plain white cane sugar

2:1 formula for Winter time
10 cups boiling water
10 lbs plain white cane sugar

Sugar Syrup is NEVER cooked. Just use the pre-boiled hot water to “melt” the sugar.

Instructions:

1. Place the sugar in a large stock pot
2. Boil water
3. Add the 10 cups of boiled (still hot) water to the stock pot
4.  Stir the sugar until it is a thick syrup and all the sugar is melted and smooth with no chunks or blobs of undissolved sugar
5. There should be approximately one gallon of sugar syrup in the stock pot now.  Let it cool to room temperature
6. Fill your bee feeder jar (Boardman feeder set up – pictured below) and place in the bee hive
7. Boardman feeder set up:  a quart sized mason jar, a screw cap with feeder holes, and a white plastic insertion board 
8. The remainder can be stored in a plastic gallon jug in the refrigerator to keep it from spoiling

It is at this point that mentioning the substitution of using the plain white processed cane sugar is not recommended.  Honey bees can not digest other sugars.  I makes them get severe diarrhea.  It could have dire effects on the entire colony survival.  This means that brown sugar, raw sugar, corn syrup, molasses, stevia, sweet n low, truvia, etc…. are not to be used.  See also:  what kind of sugar should I feed my bees.

This article is written by Beau Miakinkoff 4/4/20

Filed under: Douglas County Bees