Apiinvert 12,5kg (5 bags x 2,5kg)

01 · WHAT IS IN IT

Sugar and nothing else, no wheat, no corn

The composition is sugar and nothing else: 39 % fructose, 31 % glucose and 30 % sucrose, with 27.3 % water. There are no wheat or corn syrups, which is the difference that really counts against other liquid feeds: everything that goes into the hive here is sugar the bee can fully use. Worth knowing, though, that the bee still inverts that 30 % sucrose; the syrup comes partly inverted, not fully.

02 · WHY IT DOES NOT CRYSTALLISE

Little water, plenty of fructose

The 72.7 % dry substance is what gives it stability: with so little water the syrup keeps in store without microbiological change. And the high fructose content is what stops it crystallising inside the combs even in the cold — which is when crystallised stores leave a colony with food in front of it and no way to take it. In feed value, one litre equals 1 kg of crystallised sugar, and one kilo equals 0.73 kg.

03 · HOW TO FEED IT

The pricked bag, face down over the frames

Make 3 to 5 holes of about 1 mm in the top of the 2.5 kg bag and lay it face down over the frames, above the cluster. The bees take the syrup through the holes and the bag acts as the reservoir: no feeder to clean and no syrup fermenting in the hive. Its moment is late-winter and early-spring stimulation, when the aim is to get the queen laying before the first flow.

04 · BEFORE YOU BUY

On HMF, the usual question with industrial syrups: Südzucker states it is kept between 10 and 20 ppm during production. Not zero — no inverted syrup is — but well below what is considered a problem. And the rule that does not depend on the product: do not feed during the flow if you intend to harvest that honey for sale.