>But, If the sugar isn't gone by the time you need to make an early inspection or add a super what do you do?
I hope it's not, because if it IS gone they have usually starved. What I do is smoke them heavily to get as many as I can out of the sugar and slide it off into a plastic bucket, put the lid on and save it for making syrup. I do have to use a sieve to get the newspaper out of the syrup, but it works well otherwise. Or I can put it on as it was before except on a newspaper and fill the gaps with fresh sugar.
> Is it likely to be hardened into a chunk that can be removed
Yes and no. It's hardened but breaks up. It's stuck to the newspaper...
> or is it just going to be a wasteful mess?
I never waste it. Sometimes I've just dumped all of it into one stack of empty boxes and left it for open feeding. They ignore it once there is a flow but in the fall you can tell when you have a dearth because they will be all over it again.
> Making a big slab of candy instead sounds like a lot more work
Yes.
> but I could see it preventing that issue - if it is an issue.
But it doesn't prevent the fact that you have only a partially eaten chunk of sugar that you need to do something with. But you can, of course, use it in several ways as already discussed, syrup, reuse as feed as is, or, in the case of the candy, remake it into candy again...