At some point, you have to switch to 2:1 sugar syrup or dry sugar. I guess this is because you want the queen to stop laying and the bees to use their comb to build honey supplies. What I am doing now is dry sugar (granulated).
I think my bees were starving. I put about 4 pounds of dry sugar in, and it was gone in 5 days. I put another 4 pounds in, and much of it was still there 4 days later. So the poor bees were stressed. Feels like it's been one long dearth around here this summer.
I feed inside the hive, on top of the frames. You can put newspaper down and then the sugar on that. Instead of newspaper, I have been using the paper wrapper that the sugar comes in. It's double width, and the bees tear through the paper pretty quick. I don't want the granulated sugar to fall through to the screen below, so I use a lot of paper. I also like to reuse stuff as much as possible, and of course I don't get a paper anymore. So it's either the sugar wrapper or printer paper for my bees. Or maybe some junk mail.
When feeding dry sugar, you need to get it wet to clump it up. You can use a sprayer, but I've found that this is a great use for used coffee containers. I put the sugar in, add water, put the lid on, and shake until it's clumped up. Then I have a nice container to haul to the hives, and to store any left over sugar.
Right now I'm being bad. I have both dry sugar and 1:1 syrup in my hives. I really need them to draw more comb as they need sufficient honey stores to survive the winter, and they need more comb to store the honey in. Judging from past experiences, I'm sure this will be a disaster. Oh well, another week another hard lesson in the bee biz.
