I dropped a sugar board over one of my weaker colonies today. Here’s a 3-minute video to prove it.

I gave the bees some protein patties too. Hopefully it’ll keep them going until spring. An 11-minute cut shows up after the short version for anyone with the time for a deeper dive.

Sugar board, 12 parts sugar, 1 part water.

Two protein patties.

Another colony that needs some help.

Click one of the category links for this post for more information on making sugar feed. And I wouldn’t worry about how unnatural it is to feed sugar to honey bees. Forcing non-native insects to live in artificial wooden cavities on a cold, damp island in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean where the geological and biological processes of evolution would have never compelled them to live is… well, right out the gate, by empirical definition, keeping honey bees in Newfoundland is unnatural. Natural is nice when I can do it (I don’t like feeding sugar), but I wouldn’t exclude any practice that improves the health of my bees simple because it’s not natural.