This month’s Bee Culture has an article by Ross Conrad (he writes an article every month) on beekeeping in the northeast.  As it is autumn, he talks about preparing the hive for the winter.  Included as a sidebar for the article is his recipe for Bee Tea.  I decided to try it for feeding the bees at Blue Heron.

Here’s the recipe:
16 cups white cane sugar
6 cups hot tap water
2 cups Chamomile or Thyme tea (already brewed)
1/2 tsp natural sea salt with minerals

You add the hot tap water to the sugar and salt and stir thoroughly (?).  You do boil the water for the tea and steep it for 10-15 minutes.  Then you mix it all together and store unused amounts in the refrigerator.

I have a hard time making 2:1 syrup without using really hot water.  Maybe the water out of the tap in Vermont where Ross lives is hotter than here in Atlanta! (note:  comment below indicates it’s probably the chemistry of the water in Vermont compared to my Metro Atl water).

So  I heated my water and then stirred in the sugar and salt.  Even at that, I couldn’t add the last four cups because the first 12 had not thoroughly dissolved.

My answer was to stir the last four cups into the hot tea after it had steeped.

The next time I make it, I will steep the tea and then stir the steeped tea into the water heating on the stove.  Then before the water boils, I’ll turn it off and then stir in the sugar and salt.

Making the tea:

 Stirring all of it together:

Adding the syrup to my Blue Heron hive (notice it is more yellow than the usual clear syrup, courtesy of the Chamomile) :

You may wonder why I have both a baggie and a Boardman inside this hive.  It’s an 8 frame hive and can’t take two baggies, so I put a Boardman in so that I could put more feed on the hive at the same time, since there’s room for the Boardman inside the medium box that is surrounding the feeding mechanisms.

Another post about Ross Conrad

Źródło: Ross Conrad’s Bee Tea