Above is my crystallizing bee tea sugar syrup from the weekend. As in an earlier post, I read up on the chemistry of sugar saturation and changed my formula.
The bee tea below was made with the new formula:
- 2 cups chamomile tea, steeped for 20 minutes
- 8 cups of water
- leaves from three or four sprigs of thyme
- several shakes of coarse sea salt
- 1/2 tsp of lemon juice
- 20 cups of sugar
The jars below have been sitting for three days in my cool-at-night kitchen and have not crystallized. I've moved the jars, shaken them up (one way that crystals sometimes begin to form) and no crystals have formed.
The addition of the lemon juice which should serve to break the sucrose into glucose and fructose (and thus stop crystals from forming) had two effects. The syrup has not formed crystals. The thyme leaves instead of floating suspended in the syrup have all sunk to the bottom. You can see them in the photo below, lying on the bottom of the jars.
The addition of simply 1/2 tsp of lemon juice to this much syrup was enough to accomplish my goal. Whoo Hoo!
The redesign looks great! I usually see your posts in Google Reader, but wanted to come by the blog and say THANK YOU! for posting your solution to the syrup. I'm excited to offer our bees something besides sugar water. I appreciate your help.
ReplyDeleteI do something similar, but I also add a splash of apple cyder vinegar. That seems to help as well.
ReplyDeleteI have never heard of adding herbs and tea to 2:1 syrup! I always have problems with my syrup crystallizing (http://gatorgracie.blogspot.com/2010/10/hungry-bees.html)so I can't wait to try this!
ReplyDeleteLemon juice plus 1:1 sugar syrup
ReplyDelete(1:1 Volume/Volume)
Dripping it over the bees (<50 ml with a syringe) should help against Varroa. (If no brood exists).
As always, great information. I wounder, since chamomile tea has a relaxing, calming effect on people, would the bees also experience some relaxing effect by drinking the bee tea?
ReplyDeleteWhat possible purpose would so much chamomile tea serve in the diet of bees? Why would one add such things, given that bees cannot digest them, and they'd be something the bees would have to void in their feces?
ReplyDeleteThe amounts of everything else except chamomile tea seem insignificant and thereby mostly harmless, and the salt and lemon juice are well-understood in beekeeping, but even those beekeepers caught up in the Steiner cult of "Biodynamic" beekeeping limit their use of chamomile tea to 2%, per Michael Weiler, the "biodynamic consultant" in the UK.