Winter feeding

The gurus said it was time to feed bees; especially new colonies that have not had long to build up their own stores for the winter.
So, I dutifully followed instructions, and fed them.

I was somewhat amazed to think that the jerry can of 'Invert sugar' syrup I had bought would all fit into one hive, but that's what them-in-the-know had said, so off I went to do the deed.

14 litre jerry can of syrup.

There are winter syrup feeders available to buy at vast expense (Can't use the type I had used during the summer because this syrup is too thick and sticky for the bees to suck through the tiny mesh of the bucket feeder.) But the experts said they always used 4 standard British rectangular plastic ice cream tubs placed inside an empty super directly on the brood frames - no queen excluder.

SO, I took four nice blue Walls ice cream tubs and filled them each with syrup.
The experts also said that bees drown if they have nothing to stand on, and so to place a nice wad of straw to float on each tub of syrup.  Straw floats......check!

Here are the feed tubs full of syrup ready to be placed in the hive.

Those self same experts said it would only take 2 to 3 days for the bees to suck that lot up and need the rest of the can pouring in to top them up, so off I trotted a few days later but.....HORROR!
I found each tub with half the syrup still in place and a crust of drowned sticky bees on each one!

Sorry, no photos- things got a little too sticky for camera.
My straw wads were not big enough. The bees had landed on them, and with the weight of them all, they had sunk!  I must have lost 100 to 200 bees. Not too awful in a hive of thousands, but it was a sorry sight.

I scraped them all off, refilled the tubs and this time, shoved enough straw in that it could not be flattened - more like a straw scaffold than a float.

Straw scaffold - mostly dead and dried cow parsley stalks this time. No namby pamby dried grass!

Another check in 4 days, and the syrup was all gone. The straw and tubs were not even sticky! And there were no drowned beese. just a bunch of very full frames underneath.

So, back to business. Normally, it wouold be a question of closing the hive up and leaving it there for the winter, but we have an added variable: ivy. Lots and lots of ivy. Bees love the stuff, and it has only just begun to flower. My babies are flying back and forth with loaded paniers of pollen, and stomachs full of nectar.
With the brood box full of syrup for the winter, time to add my super again, in the hope of a late season harvest of ivy honey.
I don't feel bad about fobbing bees off with syrup while I extract the good stuff. Ivy honey sets like rock after a few weeks, and the bees can't use it during the winter anyway - at least not unless the weather is good enough to allow them to fly out for water regularly.
Guess what the next bee post will be about????