Feeding Bees: A Mix Up?

The first open crocus of the season nestles among dry vegetation outside the front gate, and swathes of snowdrops carpet the woodlands. What a change in just a week, and the ground is losing the cast iron feel underfoot. The birds are loudly singing even before daylight today, and I find a broken song thrush egg on the lawn. I suspect that it may have been one from last year blown out of a tree in the recent storms, rather than one newly laid this month. There are no thrushes to be seen so far this season but I hear woodpeckers drumming nearby every morning.

A sudden rise to 11 degrees Celsius brought all 9 colonies out in full force for cleansing flights and some foraging on snowdrops. I check them all for food stores by weighing hives with luggage scales and topping up fondant stores as required. The best food for bees is their own honey which is why I leave a shallow box of honey stores for each colony unless they haven’t had time to produce one before autumn. In this case I place a bag of fondant directly over the brood nest. If I am uncertain if the stores will last till the first nectar flow, I place a fondant block directly over the brood nests of the other colonies too.

Fondant.

What is fondant? This is a soft sugar paste used in the confectionary and bakery trade and we call this baker’s fondant. We also buy fondant from beekeeping suppliers because we think that this is specially formulated for bees and must be better for them. Am I right? Well it might be better, or it might not be depending on the ingredients. Supermarket/internet- bought confectionery fondant might have egg products or colouring and may be softer and more gloopy when exposed to hive moisture. We have a responsibility to know exactly what we are putting into our hives, especially if selling honey, so we need to carefully check the ingredients and know what they mean. I hope that I can help you navigate this tricky path.

Busting the Myth.

I was alarmed recently to receive an email which included this sentence; “Please note the Association fondant is invert sugar with bee supplements so may be a little more expensive than ordinary bakers fondant. Bakers fondant is more challenging and energy sapping for the bees to consume and process. The only accurate statement is the price difference.

Fondant is commonly made from the sugar beet plant. This sugar is a disaccharide called sucrose which is made up of two molecules of simple sugars called glucose and fructose (monosaccharides). When sucrose is split apart into glucose and fructose bakers use these forms of sugar because it promotes moisture retention and keeps their products fresher for longer. How do they do it? Well, they use an enzyme called sucrase (used to be called invertase), but an acid like acetic acid will also do the trick. However, using an acid like this can raise the hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) levels which have been shown to be toxic to honey bees under laboratory conditions.

Seeking the Truth.

I’ve asked a couple of scientists, one of whom is also a bee farmer, about the real differences between bakers fondant and bee fondant, and to question if there is a need to feeding bees inverted sugars. It turns out that one fondant manufacturer produces both types of fondant in exactly the same way but markets in different packaging.

All fondants are made using a strong sucrose solution plus a smaller amount of glucose and sometimes fructose. The brief heating and the lack of acid in the commercial processes means there is no problem with HMF. Commercial fondants can have the simple sugar component added as pure glucose, or can have the C6 sugars as enzyme-inverted sucrose (giving glucose plus fructose). No matter which way it is made, the bulk of the fondant is sucrose and so it is not made from inverted sugar.

I checked my own supply of Belgosuc bakers fondant and it contains; sugar (sucrose), glucose syrup and water. The Ambrosia bee fondant in my shed contains; sucrose, glucose and invert sugar syrup. However, the total sugar content in Ambrosia fondant is 84% sucrose, which backs up the previous statement that the bulk of fondant (any type) is not inverted.

Price.

What is different is the price however, and I paid £15 for 12.5kg Ambrosia against £10 for 12.5kg Belgosuc bakers fondant.

HMF.

If you heat sugar such as in jam making you produce a lot of HMF but it is not harmful to us in jam. However, it is worth thinking about what happens when you make your own candy/fondant for bees. If you add lemon juice, or cream of tartar, and heat the sugar as well you will produce HMF levels that may be harmful to bees.

Bee Enzymes.

Bees produce their own supplies of sucrase in their salivary glands and are very good at inverting sucrose and adding acids since they have evolved to do such a thing, all the time. This is how they start converting nectar to honey with the later addition of other enzymes. So, why should we do it for them when they have it covered? I’ve found no research- based evidence suggesting that bees use more energy inverting sucrose. But, as stated earlier, honey stores are what bees are “designed” to deal with as nutrition.

Other Myths.

Organic sugar is good for bees. Well, no: organic sugar (light brown colour) has a much higher ash content than refined white sugar and this can cause a problem in the autumn especially. This is because ash captures extra water in the gut which can lead to what we commonly called dysentery, for lack of a better description.

Bees can’t eat dry sugar. Well, yes they can if the sugar bag is placed above the winter cluster so that the natural moisture from respiration can dissolve the sucrose crystals. Beekeepers have been using dry sugar since it was discovered a very long time ago and bees cope well with sucrose.

Adding pollen to fondant must be a good thing. No, not necessarily. Certainly feeding this mix to bees in autumn may be harmful. Work by Mattila and Otis (2007) shows that the trigger for production of winter bees is the naturally reducing levels of pollen available out in the field. McAfee (2021) thinks it may be harmful to feed pollen in autumn when bees naturally head towards a break in brood rearing. You may stimulate them to rear brood at a time when it is not advantageous to the colony. However, in many situations, pollen supplements in spring may be very helpful to a colony. Pollen can carry American foulbrood spores so it must be irradiated before using. Have the pollen- supplement producing companies done this? Is their pollen safe to use?

We Love Our Bees.

Most beekeepers care a lot about their bees and want to do the best for them but don’t let’s be fooled by companies taking advantage of these facts, whether it be about buying fondant, or the latest “must have” gadgets . We can protect our bees and our purses by researching carefully any products that we use and being aware of the pros and cons. Don’t be shy about contacting manufacturers directly to ask questions. We must be careful not to keep myths alive either as it is all very confusing for new beekeepers.

Colour changes herald impending storm.

5 thoughts on “Feeding Bees: A Mix Up?”

  1. Interesting about the pollen decrease stimulating winter bees. Also agree about leaving them with their own honey rather than harvesting every drop.

  2. Very interesting, Ann Thank you for this. Just a thought; perhaps, as invertase is made from amino acids, the production and use of invertase, during the winter months, will lower the amount of protein available in the fatbodies in the spring for brood food and queen jelly production. Converting nectar and 2:1 syrup into stores, earlier in the year, when pollen amino acids are still available, is more natural. Hence the advantage of leaving honey for the bees as overwintering food.

    1. Well you could be right, Margaret Anne. I have never really thought that deeply about it; it just seems a natural thing to do, and, as I have only ever lost one colony over winter (drone laying queen) in 16 years, I figure it must be helpful to the bees.

  3. Hello Ann. Thank you for explaining the nature of fondant, something that has never been clear to me. One question: why do some beekeepers give their colonies this artificial/manufactured food that comes from sugar beets? Why not leave the bees plenty of their honey for winter stores? Doing so would mean that the bees have excellent food for winter. It would also mean that colonies do not get disturbed in winter, which we know causes them to be alarmed and raise their metabolic rates for hours, as a defense response. Is this “faffing around” with fondant because some beekeepers try to take as much honey as possible from their bees?

    1. Hello Tom. Thank you for pointing out that colonies raise their metabolic rates in response to disturbance. I think that there are several reasons for using fondant and one will be that some beekeepers do take most of the honey at the end of the season. But I think that it goes further than that. From my experience and speaking to beekeepers on courses round the country, they often associate swarm control with making increase and dividing the colony. This means that they do not unite these colonies for the summer nectar flow and so they don’t build up sufficient stores for winter. Teaching swarm control classes made me realise the importance of emphasising that the colonies can be united again a few weeks after the new queen is laying well so that they have one strong colony to build up stores and get through the winter. Here in Scotland, the Scottish Beekeepers Association send out reminders to members to feed their bees, especially in bad winters and in early spring so people are very focussed on keeping bees alive over this risky time. Also, many beekeepers are not experienced in knowing if their colonies have enough stores.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.