How To Prepare Fondant for Winter Feeding

We are coming in to our two toughest winter months, February and March, for the honeybee. Yet it was 62 degrees on Wednesday and 48 degress on Thursday – quite warm as compared to last winter. Our bees have been very active due to the  warm winter we have been experiencing in New Jersey. So we made our first winter feeding pass through  our 120 hives this week. So  far the hives look good with about 8% losses in our (15) production yards and about 10% loss in our two winter nuc yards.  Last February we drove to  C.O. Nolt & Sonin Lancaster, Pa. and picked up 150 pounds of fondant. This is the fondant we used this week. The following series of pictures provide an overview on how we prepare fondant before distributing it amongst our hives as winter feed.

Room temperature fondant is cut with pizza wheel
We clean Pizza wheel in warm water between each cutting
We used Butcher paper from Costco
We sandwich fondant between two pieces of butcher paper
The fondant is kneaded between 2 pieces of butcher paper
Rolling fondant to desired thickness
Cutting fondant to desired size- then we freeze it for 24 hours