Bee Soup

Beekeepers use cane/beet sugar or corn syrup (or a mixture of both) to make syrup to feed their bees. The syrup is fed to the bees to hold them over for a long, hard winter, or in the spring to help them build up their populations in preparation to gather a nectar flow.

Making syrup is easy. One just adds sugar to water to make a light ratio or heavy ratio syrup. The thinner ratio is fed in the spring as it simulates the nectar from the flower. The thicker solution is fed in the fall and stored by the bees for winter consumption. Many beekeepers are backyard hobbyists with family and careers demanding most, if not all, of their time.

Beehavin' Apiary makes huge quantities of syrup for its own needs so why not make the syrup available to beekeepers who don't have the time to make their own? Bee Soup^TM  is sold in 1-gallon jugs or you can fill your own containers at our Smithfield location.

More on Feeding Bees
Honey bees eat only two things: pollen, their source of protein, and honey, their source of carbohydrates. The honey comes from curing the nectar of the flower through enzymes from the bee's mouth and dehydration by evaporation (much like maple syrup). In today's ever challenging eco-environment, honey bees who are natural hoarders of nectar, often find themselves short on stores.

Our New England seasons only provide two short periods of nectar flow: spring and fall. That's about 10-weeks of productive nectar gathering per year! Back in the old days, before pesticides, pests and other diseases, honey bees in New England began building up their population in April to provide a large and vigorous foraging force in time for the May/June nectar flow. Back when flowers were plentiful and bees could thrive free of pesticides, pests and disease, this was all that they needed to store away 80 to 150 lbs of honey! They only need about 60 lbs to survive our winters and so the cycle repeated itself faithfully year after year with the beekeeper taking away the surplus.

Part of beekeeping practices today is to feed honey bees to supplement their natural honey stores. Beekeepers feed sugar syrup or corn syrup (natural substances) to bee colonies in the early spring to give them a boost to overcome the long New England winter. The influx of sugar syrup helps the colony recover and begin building up its numbers to take advantage of the May/June flower bloom. Well fed bees are then able to gather their own crop of nectar and turn it into honey. But what happens if they can't gather a crop in the spring?

Sometimes our unpredictable New England weather and eco-adverse environment thwarts our best efforts to build up the colonies. As natural practices beekeepers we're in a quandary. Do we let nature take its course and let the bees starve to death? Or worse still, do we let their health dwindle from malnourishment? Or, do we intervene and feed them a substitute food? Beekeepers step in and feed their bees to keep them healthy and ready them to gather the next crop when the bloom presents itself.

You Can Make Your Own
Making sugar syrup is easy! For light syrup, used in the spring, remember the formula 5-10-2. Put 5 quarts of hot tap water into a 2-gallon pail and stir in 10 lbs of sugar. Double the sugar for heavy syrup, but this time, you will have to boil the water to make it able to absorb all of the sugar.

• Make one batch at a time to ensure that the syrup is fresh and to prevent it from crystallizing or growing mold.
• Use only white or granulated sugar. Never use brown sugar or powdered sugar as these contain harmful ingredients for bees such as corn starch (gives them a bellyache).
• Beet sugar is fine (this is the most common sugar sold in the US) and of course, cane sugar is also fine.
• Be careful not to scorch the syrup when you make it. Throw away scorched sugar syrup as this will kill the bees.
• Wash your containers!
• Out of time? Buy Beehavin's Bee Soup!

Feeding Methods
You can feed bees in open containers or in the beehive using Boardman feeders, division board feeders and hive top feeders. Each feeder has its advantages and no one feeder is superior to the other. Your choice of feeder depends on your own situation. To read more about feeding bees, see the presentation: Why We Feed the Bees, on the Bristol County Beekeepers' website.