Fondant and candy are solid feeds. They are used where syrup cannot be: in cold weather, and as emergency feeding when a colony is close to starving.

When solid feed is right

• Winter emergency feeding: When a colony proves short of stores and it is too cold to process syrup
• Late in the season when syrup can no longer be evaporated and capped
• Small units and mating nuclei
• Queen cages, as travel food

Where to place it

Directly above the cluster, on the frames under the inner cover.

This matters more than the feed itself. In cold weather the cluster cannot move sideways, so feed placed at the edge of the hive may as well not be there.

The water requirement

This is the point most often missed. Bees need water to take up solid feed.

In winter they get it partly from condensation inside the hive. But this means solid feeding is not a substitute for adequate autumn feeding — it is a rescue measure with limits.

Advantages

• Usable in cold weather
• Does not stimulate robbing the way syrup does
• Does not spill
• Simple to place with minimal disturbance

Limitations

• Taken up more slowly than syrup
• Requires water
• Does not build winter stores; it prevents starvation
• Cannot be used to stimulate brood rearing as syrup can

What to check first

A colony needing emergency feed usually has a reason: it went into winter short, it was queenless, or the stores were unreachable beside rather than above the cluster.

Feeding solves the immediate crisis. The note to write down is why it happened, so the following autumn is different.

Rules

Do not feed with supers on. Record what was fed and when — it belongs in the same records as everything else.