community feeder of dry sugar?

[SallyD]

Hi all: We are having a warm day here in ATL and I was wondering if it would be wise to put out a community feed of just dry sugar? I sure would not want to encourage robbing. How far from the hive should it be if you do think this is a wise idea?

[jmgi]

Personally, I have never even heard of feeding dry sugar in the open, I'm sure someone else can comment on it though. John

[Eddie Honey]

I think Sally means open feed with syrup OR place dry sugar on top of each hive.

The warm isn't going to last long so I went ahead and did both;
During my candy board making some of the candy was runny so I open fed that and the bees licked it up in the last 2 days.
The bees won't have much time to dry the syrup though.

Now that I got the candy all made correctly I'll place candy on each hive today with temps in the 50's.

[beemandan]

I was wondering if it would be wise to put out a community feed of just dry sugar?

I don't think bees will be drawn to dry, granulated sugar. It needs to be dissolved for them to use. When people put dry sugar in their hives, I believe it depends on the humidity inside the hive to dissolve enough for them to consume.
Although I haven't tried it myself....so I'm really only guessing.

[Rube63]

I put dry sugar out on drum lids and mist it with water and they will go to it. Just don't get it so wet that they get stuck in it. And you will need to get it inside when it rains or it will wash away.

[rlsiv]

We had some warm weather late last week (low-to-mid 60's), and I put some feed on a few hives. When I did, I left a bucket of dry sugar sitting in my breezeway, and a couple hours later there were PLENTY of bees working it.

[jmgi]

I would agree that putting dry sugar out in the open and wetting it slightly would work out better than dry sugar alone, but if you're going through the trouble to open feed why not just use a few large bottles of syrup with holes in the lids and inverted over some sticks. John

[mike haney]

A better more balanced approach is to evaluate individual hives rather than to "shotgun" feed to bees everywhere - including ones with bad mite/virus infections and the local yellowjacket wasp population
Good Luck, Mike

[Rube63]

More volume and less fighting. Hundreds feed on each lid and less competition for the feed point.