Feeding Time:

It’s early spring here, and the bees don’t have honey on their frames we transferred from the nucs, so we must feed them. We’ve done that in two ways: liquid and cake food.

Here is the liquid food. I dissolved sugar and honey in hot water, then let it cool. I made the solution thicker than 1/1. I’d say it’s closer to 2/1 to give them a rich start for their colony building. Plus, we’re about to have 3-4 days of rain, and it’s still cool, so I didn’t think they needed hydration as much as sugar sustenance. This reminds me of having babies and thinking how much water to add to juice to dilute it in their bottles.

We used the kind of feeder for the liquid that gives the bees access from inside the hive because we worry about robbing bees. Basically, it’s a mason jar with holes in its lid, turned upside down that drips onto a container that the bees can get access to from the side facing into the hive.
We also added entrance reducers to the left of the feeder after I took this photo.

The second kind of food I’m giving the bees are cakes of sugar that I made using 10 parts sugar to one part water. You boil water, add the sugar gradually until it dissolves. It will turn caramel color instead of white. Just as the mixture begins to reboil, you take it off the sheet and pour it on paper plates on which you’ve put waxed paper or plastic wrap (to make removing it easier). After it’s cooled, it breaks up nicely to put on top of the colony, and they’ll eat it slowly as needed.
I put these cakes above a queen excluder inside a ventilation shim that I bought from Evans Cedar Beehives in NJ.
After you’re done, you can turn any leftover sugar into sugar water solution for your liquid feeders.

      our lower hive                  our upper hive