Not commonly listed as a pollen plant, pendulous sedge is actually very well worked by bees, we always see (and hear) a lot of workers on this plant.
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Following on from our overview blog of winter feeding we thought that we'd show how we make our candy. We start with approx. one third weight of water in ratio to sugar, or maybe a little less. Before going further, please be careful when making candy to feed to bees, boiling water and syrup are both potentially dangerous and demand the same level of common sense that all cooking procedures should be afforded. For now, here are a few more general photos, it's great to look through the seasons photos at this time of year. During the depths of winter it's possible that a colony may start to run low of stores. While this may be the result of initially going into winter with insufficient reserves to see them through it can equally occur in a colony which, well prepared the previous Autumn, has simply continued to rear brood due to a mild spell of weather, all the time consuming food which in a colder year might have lasted so much better. If for any reason we think that this may be the case then we need to take action to ensure the survival of our stock. Traditionally the method of choice was to make bee 'candy' and to place a block of this on top of the hive (very often, on or around, Christmas day; quite a nice family tradition for a beekeeper to add to such an important seasonal event). Recent years have seen many people move towards the idea of feeding fondant which can be purchased in blocks ready to distribute amongst the hives but really, if we only have a few colonies then traditional candy is an easy solution to consider and not at all difficult. We're just putting together a photo slideshow to demonstrate how we make candy which we'll be posting in the next couple of days. |
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