When Sugar Syrup Crystallizes!

In preparation for going to the mountains for Christmas, I took the tops off of the crystallized honey from Topsy and this is what I found:  totally crystallized sugar with ants caught in the sugar.

How do you imagine the ants got stuck there?  They certainly died a sweet death, but it's hard to imagine the crystallization happening so fast that they couldn't escape!



Here's the camera on another setting viewing the stuck ants....their feet encased in crystallized sugar.



The other jar looked about the same.  This is why I am now adding lemon juice to the bee tea.  The chemical result is that the sugar syrup doesn't crystallize.


I have not put food on Topsy since after Thanksgiving.  It has been extremely cold in Atlanta - in the 20s most days - so I wasn't thinking the bees would be able to move around.  We are about to go into January and February when the bees are most in danger of starving so I have my fingers crossed for my hives.

Chemistry: The Secret to Crystal-Free 2:1 Bee Tea Sugar Syrup

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

Bring the water to a rolling boil while the tea is steeping. Add the tea, thyme, salt and lemon juice to the boiling water. Turn off the heat and stir in 20 cups of sugar. I stir in 4 cups at a time and stir until that fully dissolves before adding the next 4 cups.



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!

It is SO hard to make 2:1 Syrup

About half the time I succeed; about half the time, it crystallizes. It is such a frustrating process. And the hard part is you don't know it's going to crystallize until after it has cooled off.

I made 2:1 syrup (actually bee tea - chamomile and thyme added to the 2:1 syrup) early this morning to take to Valerie's house today. I poured it into jars while warm, put it in the car and delivered it to Topsy around noon today. The third jar that I filled is crystallizing tonight. That means that the syrup I put on Topsy will also be crystallizing.....GRRRR.



According to this site, saturating the solution with sugar to the point at which the water can take no more is an invitation for crystals to form.  This is why so many commercial beekeepers use high fructose corn syrup.  Fructose does not crystallize.  But sucrose (sugar) does.  You add lemon juice or cream of tartar to candy to keep it from crystallizing.  I will look into whether anyone ever adds lemon juice to 2:1 sugar syrup.

You can see the crystals forming at the bottom of this jar.  Once it gets started the crystals beget more crystals and on and on like Genesis until the entire bottle is solid sugar again.



Another view of my frustration.



The two bottles of 2:1 that I took off of Topsy also had been busy crystallizing, as you can see in the picture below with crystals forming around the top of the jar (the bottom as it is set into the Boardman inside the top bar hive - I don't feed with Boardman feeders on the outside of any hive).  The bees had pretty much emptied the jars despite the crystals, thank goodness.



I have all kinds of objections to high fructose corn syrup, but adding a tablespoon is recommended to keep crystal formation from starting.  I think also adding a small bit of lemon juice might accomplish the same thing.  I may try this in my next batch.

After one of the comments below, I looked up Honey B Healthy and it does have lemongrass in the mix - maybe the acid of the lemongrass in it is what keeps the syrup from forming crystals because the sugar in it is sucrose.

Tomorrow when I make more bee tea I'm going to try to add a teaspoon of lemon juice and see what the effect is on the crystal issue.  BTW, I found a post on Beemaster where someone recommends adding a little lemon juice to the mix.