Making fondant patties with benefits for your bees in the winter!

okay we're gonna make some fondant patties this is my I got this recipe off the internet but I kind of modified a little bit for what I like but this is a double batch the recipe that's on our website is for three patties and you only use one bag of sugar and 16 ounces of water this is 32 ounces of water and then you put two bags of ten pounds of sugar so you put that in has to be a good size pan so it won't blow over once we put it in we turn on the water we dump the water in turn it on high until it starts boiling alright so now we're going to add in sugar again remember I'm doing a double batch so if you only did 16 ounces of water you don't make one bag of sugar and stir it so it doesn't start burning on the bottom get the look little bit dissolving as much down it won't dissolve real fast it takes a little bit of time usually until it almost boils bring this time you want to stir it every few minutes to make sure it doesn't start burning the bottom sugar on the bottom so it's nice creaming right so we'll let that come up to a boil and about that time you need to be a P be around when that does because it does slow them up at that boil point and then it will boil back down again just fine but if your pans not deep enough it can boil over so you'd be really careful with that we'll be back as it starts to boil okay so now it's starting to boil this is where it Frost's up and if you have it too shallow a panic and boil over usually it'll boil up and then it'll it'll just kind of lose its head and drop back down and be just a liquid syrup so now it's a boil back down again now let's all dissolve all the sugar is involved now clear liquid sugar and we're gonna let it boil now for it until we get it up to the temperature right now is like 212 degrees 1714 now 114 degrees and so we're going to wait until it's 238 degrees and that's to 238 to 240 is where we want to be and that's what we'll take it off the heat now once it's boiled we want to turn it down from high down to a II's 7 on my stove - it'll slowly build up to that but it takes longer to and it allows the sugar to invert that's what we're trying to do is break that glute sucrose molecule into glucose and fructose and that's part of the heating process does that all right so we got us boiling we're at two to thirty ninth which is just a little over 238 so we're ready to take this off you can see the bubbles are kind of what they call a bubble on bubble in the candy it's kind of the hard candy stage you can use this kind of thermometer as well as a candy thermometer I like this infrared style if you know it's easy to clean and then I anyway I turned it off I take the take it off the stove and I'm going to just set it here in the sink and let it cool down I wanted to get down to about 220 degrees and then then we're going to do the mixer to start the crystallization to a Curtis it's sort of current so I measure this to what I want to look for is the surface is only 220 underneath it'll be a little hotter but that's kind of my benchmark I want to hit and then I want to it's still kind of liquidy start to crystallize a little bit on this surface and you start like it's starting to go a bit milky so I don't get really big crystals I want to beat this up again [Music] and it'll start to do what we call what I call the after boil it'll start to boil again here in just a second it will foam up and the crystallization process is occurring which is putting out some heat and it'll actually warm back up again a little bit so here calms it's starting to rise up I'm gonna start boiling here in a second this is what I call my after below the others a little bit and requests on the edges get it down in the middle a little bit so it's kind of boiling down it's still kind of boiling a little bit but it's just run into this really mushy crystallized stop candy basically and I after I kind of let it cool down a little bit hasn't watched the world I'll kind of eat it again I'm trying to break in crystals down some of those small crystals are not large and I kind of keep this stuff on the side scraped off and make sure the bottom doesn't start crusting on you because it's cold or so it'll start to stick down okay break the bottom I've got to let it cool down now to around 180 and 180 85 degrees and right now it's to 27 to 28 and so it's got a cool down to 180 and that's when I'll add in my pollen and my honey be healthy so the honey be healthy in our recipes on the website as well this is essential oils expect essentially it has spearmint in it that helps with Nosema and then lemon or lemongrass excuse me lemongrass is to help the bees love that smell and they don't like spearmint so that so that they'll take their medicine you put the lemongrass in there and then I had a guy tell me that the lavender helped with the mic and trouble bit so I put a little lavender in mine as well then I had put in some bee pollen and so the bee pollen I buy large quantities of it but it's and we'll start harvesting our own this next year but I buy it and it's kind of little grain it's in this grant granule form you can see here and I put that into a blender and pulverize it so it kind of Pat makes a powder out of it like over here so it breaks down some of those grannies and then I'll put that in when it gets down to 180 degrees I put pollen in and honey be held the mix that all together and we'll show you how that works when we get down to temperature here so now we've got it down to under 180 degrees we want to do that so that when we put the pollen in and the honey be healthy it isn't going to change or destroy it ruin it so it'll it'll keep it something that the bees can use what happens sometimes is when you get to this stage it may thicken up and get really stiff and I've already done a little bit of water in this but what you can do you know when stirring this it's still pretty thick and so you may want to just give it a little shock just a little bit of water not a lot you can always add more water that you can't take it out once you put a pencil and then it'll thin it down and make it a little bit more runny is what you want it to be to get into the paper place so that's kind of where I want it and then I'm going to put in my pollen and it's a quarter cup for 1/2 probe for a regular batch you know for just three puffs but I'm doing a double batch so I put a half a cup in and then I put in two tablespoons of honey be healthy for the single batch and because I'm doing a double batch it'll be four tablespoons you're putting in for a double batch will make six patties instead of three okay and I've added some water in here so that'll help spin it down a little bit you don't want to get it too thin after you've added I'm gonna mix that all in really good break the bottom there's a big crunch down the corner this is what it should look like it should be kind of a runny consistency but not too liquidy too we're gonna take over here because I I try to it's about one and a half pounds I do one it's actually one pound and seven ounces that fits in here that equally spreads it out so I put this up putting this on 1.7 and then we set that aside okay so now we pour them into the plates they're going they'll be it'll take them a little while they're a little soft right now but it'll take them to the next half hour level hard and then when you put these into your high you want to make sure you remove the paper plate do not leave the paper plate on and just there'll be a hard disk and then you or you may break into chunks but you set those right on top of the hive right on the frames right where the cluster is in the center of the hive the bees need to be in contact with it to be able to eat it so one other thing I didn't show you that I did is I spray these plates with a little bit of cooking spray oil Pam whatever to give it so the plate the plate will come off easily once it's cooled off if you have any other questions you're welcome to email us or on our site I think we have a little blog that talks about this a little bit as well and they're about the B BT that has an r6 in your thin insulation foam in here and then that has enough space here so that the B being will sit down over the top of the patty and give it some space so it gives them insulation a top entrance which is critical in a hive during the winter time to have a top entrance so that the moisture in the hive can escape through behind the concept is whether you use a quilt board or some like this it's an r6 insulation value which i think is a lot more insulation than the quilt boards are but and a lot more compact that's why I like this but the quell boards work they're a great product and a good idea they're just they're just much more bulky and a little more for me when I have so many hives I can't afford I had fifty hives last year to have 50 of these stacked ran during the summer times it takes a lot of space up so to me compactness is as important as efficiency how effective it is anyway happy beekeeping and we'll holler if you have any questions

Channel: Homer's Honey

Views: 23,619

Keywords: Bees, Winter, Feeding, Fondant Patty, Beekeeping, Equipment, Bee Beanie, Insulation, Healthy, Homers Honey, Utah

Id: kA1MLdU6iIY

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 22 2018