There are essentially only two types of sugar syrup that we need to consider:

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Granulated sugar made from sugar beet and inverted syrup.

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Before I get into the differences I will make a very succinct point:

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Unless you're going to be a beekeeper, as opposed to someone who wants to be able to help a bee if you find one in trouble, the only syrup you need is one that you can make at home that will cost you next to nothing. A 1kg bag of Silver Spoon is currently £1.08 so 2.5g of sugar plus a bit of warm tap water is going to cost you a little over 2p and that is all it will cost to fill our tube!

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However, for beekeepers who choose to give their bees some syrup to see them through the winter months will often buy Invertbee syrup, it's designed to be more easily digestible by bees, and that currently costs £30.50 for 10L (14kg).

 

That's fine, they're not looking out for a lost and struggling bee, they're making sure that the bees in their hives are going to make it through a 5 month period... should they need it.

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This begs a question as to why some other sites are offering to sell you a 12.5ml bottle of Invertbee syrup for £11.99 when it's not only excessively priced for the equivalent of £9592.00 for 10L, that's 800x as much as the cost of the syrup, but completely unnecessary when you all you need to do is give a bee sufficient energy to be able to fly back to its hive or nest!

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To keep things in perspective, to make your own 12.5ml of syrup it's £0.13 and the difference to the bee is life whereas to your household it's one less heaped teaspoon of sugar in a cup of tea.

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The only kit  you need to make the syrup is a small glass, or other glass container, not plastic, and a teaspoon.

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Even better if you have some measuring spoons as you only need a 1/2 teaspoon to fill the tube and have a bit left over!

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Put half a teaspoon of hot tap water in the glass and half a teaspoon of sugar into the water, stir it or swirl it in the glass - it took about 90 seconds for it to dissolve completely for me - then you can use the pipette included in the kit to fill your tube - one full squeeze of the pipette is all you need to do.

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That's it, ready to help!

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