Sugar crystals on the bottom board?

[tjc1]

Both of my hives are showing crystals and pellets of sugar sprinkled on the bottom board. Some look like pellet snow, others like regular sugar crystals and some like small, clear, rock candy crystals. Are they getting rid of crystallized honey/sugar syrup?

[paus]

I have never had any experience with this, but the dean of BEEKS in our club said he put granulated sugar on top of the frames in a shallow pan and after a few days he looked at the hive and there was a pile of sugar on the ground in front of the hive.

[Mark Smith]

Sometimes if you feed the colony fondant or sugar blocks they will remove it as if it was trash to them. This is usually a sign the they didn't need it.

[BeeMaster2]

Are you feeding your bees fondant or dry sugar?
Is there a lot of crystallized honey in the comb?
Jim

[tjc1]

No, I'm not feeding dry sugar, which is why I was curious. I can only think that it is crystalized honey. I extracted some honey from last year's deadouts to feed to them in late summer, and some of that honey was cloudy from beginning to crystalize. But even so, bees will use dry/crystalized sugar so I would have thought that they wouldn't be getting rid of this. It is not in large quantities by any means, just scatterings like in the photo.

[BeeMaster2]

That's a first for me. I Saw it last year when I tried feeding dry sugar. Seemed like most of went in to the bottom of the hive.
Jim

[rwlaw]

I've been following the thread and I wonder if it's bits of sugar that one would never see, but has reacted to the humidity and acted like popcorn. It does look like the bees have been housekeeping with the amount of capping bits laying around, more than normal this time of the year.

[mtnb]

Taste it

[BeeMaster2]

Taste it

Saying that, you reminded me of Cheesh and Chong. "Good thing we didn't step in it."

[tjc1]

Oh, I've tasted it - it's sugar all right.