Cook for the bees: Homemade sugar bricks
Holiday cooking for the bees.
Many people ask me what the bees do during the winter. My typical response is that it’s Netflix and Chill Season for the bees. They have everything they need to cuddle in a cluster through the winter.
To prevent colonies from starving, I add a sugar brick to each one. Even if they have generous honey reserves. Many beekeepers refer to this as an insurance policy. While the bees cluster, they may not be able to move a few frames over to grab honey. The sugar brick rests above the cluster and allows the workers on the fringes to pass down food on cold days. On warmer days, the bees can wander from the cluster and “grocery shop” on other frames.
Even if they don’t need the sugar brick for energy, it also serves as a moisture absorber. Moisture and cold is a great combination for frozen, dead bees. Allowing the moisture a space to settle in the sugar brick keeps it away from the bees. Some beekeepers use quilt boxes—shallow-sized hive boxes full of burlap and/or dry leaves that create a similar attic space for moisture to collect away from the bees.
If you’re in a bind and you need to make your bees sugar bricks as soon as possible, just use the first 2 ingredients in this recipe. No worries if you don’t have the other ingredients.
Sugar brick recipe for winter bee feeding
Feeds 1-to-4 colonies depending on size and seasonal weather patterns.
4 cups pure cane sugar
1/8 cup water (You could also brew chamomile or herbal tea and use it in lieu of water. Check out my bee tea recipe.)
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp ProHealth, Honey B Healthy, HiveAlive or similar honey bee supplement
Sprinkle of salt
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Ensure this blends well so that the moisture is distributed evenly. I use a silicon spatula and make criss-cross patterns across the blend in between stirring. I find this helps combine everyhing well.
Line an 8” cake pan or pie dish with parchment paper or wax paper.
Pour blend into the lined pan. Press down with a spatula or back side of a large spoon. Pack the blend tight.
Let it rest for at least a day (ideally 2 or 3) to harden. I like to rest mine a few feet from the fireplace where the air is warm and dry.
Add the sugar brick to your hive.
If you have 1 hive, take the tray out to your beeyard. Remove the brick from the pan and rest it on the frames in your top box. Add an empty medium or shallow box to create an “attic” space for the sugar brick. (If you were to add an empty box during the spring or summer, the bees would most definitely create burr comb throughout, but during the winter they have no resources or interest in building comb.) If you have multiple colonies, break up the brick to distribute evenly. For instance, I doubled this recipe and will split 2 sugar bricks into pieces to distribute among 7 colonies.
Take a peek at my video on how to cook for the bees. My earlier recipe included ¼ cup of water, which requires baking the sugar bricks on a low temperature to dry them out. Since then I’ve found the 1/8 cup of water allows for a no-bake sugar brick.
Other names for sugar bricks
You may have heard of fondant, fondant patties, sugar pies, or sugar blocks for feeding bees. I find these are all interchangeable terms. The primary ingredients are sugar and water, but you can also jazz up the brick with some nutrition and essential oils to further support the bees.
When to add sugar bricks to hives
Here in North Carolina we experience all four seasons distinctly. The sugar bricks serve the bees best when it’s too cold to forage. Once temperatures drop, the risk of robber bees drops. (If sugar bricks were added in the summer here, they would surely attract robber bees.) I don’t wait for a specific date or signal from the bees to tell me when it’s time to add the sugar bricks to the hives. Instead, I keep a close eye on the extended forecast. As soon as I see days start to consistently show daytime temperatures in the low 50s or high 40s (F), that tells me it’s time to add the bricks. I also use this as a cue to remove robber screens from the hives (which I added on the day I extracted honey) and replace them with entrance reducers on medium settings. The entrance reducers help prevent drafts, and the larger setting allows the bees more traffic lanes for cleansing flights and foraging on warm winter days.
On those warmer winter days, I lift the top cover on each hive to see if the bees need more food. The bees have already surprised me this year. I added sugar bricks to all of the hives in mid/late November and the bees had already finished them by mid-December. We’ll see how long these latest snacks last them.
Interested in more ways to feed bees?
Take a peek at earlier posts.
