🍯 Fondant & Candy Board Feeding Lab

About this simulation

This is a cutaway of a winter hive: a lower brood box where the bee cluster shelters, topped by an eke or candy board holding emergency feed. The scene compares solid fondant against liquid syrup as the outside temperature drops, showing why fondant is the standard cold-weather feed.

How it works

• Fondant is already reduced to roughly 78–80% sugar with very little free water, so bees can nibble it directly as a solid — no evaporation work required, even in a cold snap.
• Syrup is mostly water. Bees must fan and evaporate the excess before it is safely storable, which needs warmth and active flight-muscle heat the cluster won't spare below about 10°C.
• Below its freezing point, syrup turns to ice inside the feeder and becomes physically impossible to take up; fondant simply stays workable, just firmer.
• The winter cluster itself contracts as it gets colder, trading contact with outer frames (and feed) for shared warmth — so feed must sit directly over or against the cluster to be reachable at all.

Controls

• Outside temperature — drives cluster tightness and whether syrup has frozen.
• Feed type — switch between fondant, thin syrup (1:1) and heavy syrup (2:1).
• Colony size — more bees cluster tighter and draw down feed faster when it's accessible.
• Sim speed — speeds up the simulated clock so feed consumption is visible sooner.
• ↺ Refill feed block — resets the feed supply to a fresh 1 kg block/tray.

Did you know?

A standard 12.5–20 oz (350–500g) hive-top fondant block can carry a colony through several weeks of a UK winter, and unlike syrup it can be given at any point from autumn right through to early spring without risking chilled or fermenting stores.