Sugar Rush

As a beekeeper, I often hear that people find locally produced honey to be expensive.  I cannot even tell you how many times I have heard local prices compared to what honey costs at Costco.  These price comparisons do not particularly bother me as we have many loyal customers who appreciate our honey  and keep coming back for more.  However, it is during autumn that I am always reminded of why local honey costs what it does.  Keeping bees is expensive!

At this time of year, most beekeepers are busy feeding their bees to help them prepare for winter.   The rule of thumb in our area is that each hive needs two deep boxes (or 120 lbs) of honey to feed themselves until spring.  To help the bees, we feed them 2:1 sugar syrup made from white granulated cane sugar and hot water.  This serves as a nectar supplement that the bees can convert fairly easily into honey stores.

 So yes, I am the crazy bee lady that buys eight 2 lbs bags of sugar weekly throughout much of September and October.  At $2 per bag, 2 bags per hive and 4 hives, I spend $16 per week on sugar.

In hindsight, I think it is hilarious that one of the reasons I decided to start beekeeping in the first place was to reduce the amount of white sugar we buy.  Why not produce our own honey instead, right?  I can honestly say that since becoming a beekeeper I have bought more sugar that I would have ever thought possible.  So silly.

I inspected my hives today and the honey stores in two of them are very good.  The other two hives have quite a bit of storage work to do over the next several weeks.  I will need to keep feeding for some time yet.  It looks like I am off to the store for more sugar.