Winter Feed Calculator

Enter your hive's current weight and your target winter weight. Get the dry sugar and finished 2:1 syrup you actually need — corrected for the energy bees burn curing syrup, so you don't under-feed heading into winter. Free, no signup, all math in your browser.

Conversion assumption

Accounts for energy bees burn curing syrup. ~1.5 lb sugar per 1 lb of stored gain (Randy Oliver trial data).

Enter a current and a higher target weight to see how much sugar to feed.

Estimates fall syrup being stored before winter — not mid-winter survival feeding (use dry sugar or fondant then). Bees burn energy curing syrup, so you must feed more sugar than the weight gain you want. This is why our number is higher than calculators that assume 1 lb sugar = 1 lb stores.

Related tools and reading

Don't let a colony starve

HiveSense tracks hive weight and feeding per colony so you know exactly which hives still need stores before the cold.

New to winter prep? Read the starter kit guide