Sugar Boards

I’ve overcome my snootiness about feeding bees with sugar in winter.* As I said, I’m going the whole hog with feeding this time round.

So, I followed directions from Honey Bee Suite (one of my favourite sources of beekeeping information) about how to supplement the bees’ stores with solid sugar by adding sugar boards to the hives. Or as Rusty herself (in America) calls them, “candy boards”.

Here are my DIY efforts:

1. Take an eke.

Or build one. But I started with this one that I already had.

2. Add one of those plastic queen excluders.

Yes, the ones that many beekeepers don’t like.

3. Nail it on.

I couldn’t get the nail heads to go flush with the plastic. I hope it won’t be a problem.

4. Upturn it on a covered workbench.

I put a plastic board underneath.

5. Take 4 kg white sugar.

Quite a lot.

6. Add 10 tablespoons of water.

The fun part! Mix it by hand. It’s like snow. An illusion that is enhanced by the sugar being icy cold having just come out of the pantry.

7. Place a wooden block in the middle of the eke.

Luckily our garage is full of such things so a bucket of suitable wooden blocks was readily to hand.

8. Add the sugar, and tamp it down.

There was just enough to thinly cover the queen excluder.

9. Leave to dry.

I’m leaving it overnight. Let me tell you how it will be tomorrow. The sugar will have set rock hard. The wooden block will be easily removable. There will be a minimum of sugar escape through the queen excluder on to the plastic board. I will not spill any sugar on the floor. It will be a warm sunny morning and I will add the sugar board to Queen Mab’s hive with no problem at all.

See, this is so much better than waiting till it’s all done before posting the story online.

I have 3 more of these still to make. And then I’ll be making “dry boards” (what Rusty calls “moisture quilts”) which will sit on top of the sugar boards to assist ventilation and removal of damp from the colony. I shall report back in due course…

Update December 2018: see here

*Not strictly true. I still remain suspicious of the practice. But I’ve come round to the view that it’s ok under some circumstances.