Vol. XII. 



M)Y. 15, 1884. 



No. 'Z2 



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HOW^ TO MAKE SUGAR SYRUP FOR 

 BEES. 



THE C'UVSTALLIZATION TKOIBLK. 



@W1NG to the poorness of the past season lor 

 honey, I found, upon looking over my bees 

 about the 10th of Sept., that I must feed quite 

 a quantity of sugar in order that they might 

 have sufficient stores for winter. The major 

 part of my full colonies had nearly enough honey 

 to winter on, had it been equalized among them; 

 but all of my queen-rearing colonies were nearly 

 destitute, so that the feeding of honey or sugar to 

 them became a necessity, if I would keep them. At 

 the present low price of sugar I did not hesitate 

 long in deciding to feed that instead of honey, after 

 which I began to hunt for recipes for making the 

 sugar into syrup. 



In Gi.E.ANiNGS I found friend Root saying that all 

 that was necessary was to pour boiling water on the 

 sugar, and stir it, when it would be ready to feed as 

 soon as cool enough, so that the bees would not be 

 burned by it. As this was the most simple of all the 

 plans given, I tried it the first of any. The feeders j 

 T used were what is termed "division-board feed- | 

 ei'S," they being to ray liking, especially for small | 

 colonies like those used for rearing queens. As 

 these feeders allow the bees to go inside the feeder, 

 there would, of course, after they had been once 

 filled, be more or less bees in them when the feed 

 was poured in the second night. But as friend Root 

 tells us that feed poured on to bees will do no more 

 harm than water poured on to a duck's back, pro- 

 viding the bees do not drown in the syrup, I could 

 see no impropriety in turning the feed on them. All 

 went well the first night; but when I came to go to 



my syrup the.ne.xt night, I found it skimmed over 

 with a crust of sugar which had formed on the sur- 

 face of the syrup during the 24 hours it had been 

 standing. I also found that it had granulated on 

 the bottom and sides of the can; and ui)Oii going to 

 the hives I found a little on the sides and bottom of 

 the feeders. However, I persisted in feeding it, as 

 friend Root assured us that this syrup needed no 

 cream of tartar nor vinegar in it, till one day I no- 

 ticed bees out at the entrance of each hive fed, in 

 large numbers, having little grains of sugar on their 

 wings and bodies where the syrup had crystallized. 

 These bees were trying to fly; but the most of them 

 had so much sugar on their wings that they could 

 only hop around, making a purring sound with 

 their wings. 1 ne.vt looked inside the hive, when 1 

 found that fully a fifth of the bees had more or less 

 of these sugar crystals on them, while the inside of 

 the feeders was all covered with crystals. Upon 

 looking into the cells containing the syrup I found 

 that in many of them crystallization had commenc- 

 ed to such an extent that the crystals were easily 

 seen. 



I said to myself that this would never answer; so 

 when the ne.xt batch of syrup was boiled I put vine- 

 gar in the water before the sugar was added. Friend 

 Root says, in ABC, that grape is much the best ar- 

 ticle to put in (although he said in Gleanings noth- 

 ing was needed); but as I don't wish to use glucose 

 in any shape, and not having any grape sugar, this 

 was out of the question. 



While the vinegar helped some about cryst;vlliza- 

 tion, it also gave a taste to the syrup, which I did 

 not like; so in the ne.xt I tried cream of tartar, and 

 then tartaric acid; but in spite of them all, the syr- 

 up would granulate some unless 1 added so much 

 that a disagi-eeable taste was given to the syrup. 



