# Suger water question



## Stooge King (Dec 3, 2010)

This is a simple question that is so basic no one seems to think it needs to be covered in the stuff I've read.

I have seen various mixtures 1:1 2:1 even 3:1 for sugar to water but what are the measures involved 1lb to a gallon? 1cup to a quart? WHAT to WHAT?

Thanks for helping a newbee


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## brac (Sep 30, 2009)

a gal of water, weights 8 pounds, so 4 pound bag to 1/2 gal of water for 1:1 
16 pounds to 1 gallon for 2:1


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## runner_114 (Aug 31, 2009)

one gallon water + 8.34#s of sugar= 1 to 1


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## brac (Sep 30, 2009)

runner, if your weighing your sugar to the 1/100 of a pound you may need counciling.


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## MDS (Jan 9, 2011)

I've always understood it to be in terms of volume. In other words, one quart of water to one quart of sugar is 1to1. Half a quart of water to one quart of sugar is 2to1 (thicker). Never heard about using a 3to1 in anything.


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## brac (Sep 30, 2009)

some folks do weight, some do volume, both work. I believe by volume it is a bit thicker. 
And I don't think it is possible to do 3:1 it would not stay in suspension, without some science.


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## runner_114 (Aug 31, 2009)

Brac you may be right on that :applause:


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## Stooge King (Dec 3, 2010)

Thanks folks. I knew ir would be simple


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## ccar2000 (Aug 9, 2009)

This is a recipe someone shared with me 
1:1 sugar water;
Approx 5lbs sugar add water to fill one gallon vessel.
By my rough calculations 5 pounds of sugar would be equivalent to .39 gallons of sucrose. That leaves 0.61 gallons of water which weighs about 8.34 X 0.61 = 5.087 lbs. It is kind of looking like 1:1.

How about that for science?


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

I don't like to measure so I ran some numbers that allow me to use any container without any measuring device. You can fill any container with 45% water and top with sugar to get 2:1. You can add about 60% water and top with sugar to get 1:1. Here's the logic ->

Given a gallon of 2:1 is 11 lbs then X+Y=11 with X being sugar and Y being water. Also, since we want 2:1 this means 2X=Y. A simple substitution gives 3X=11 or X=3.67 and Y therefore equals 7.33. Since 3.67 pounds of water 0.45 gallons of water (3.67/8.24) all one needs to remember is that any given container filled with 45% water and topped off with sugar is a 2:1 mix.

Now if we want 1:1 another layer is added. Since 7.33 pounds of sucrose (above) makes up the difference left behind in one gallon of water filled to 45% with water then 55% must be for sucrose. Since 7.33lbs of sucrose/.55 gallons of sucrose = 13.3lbs/gallon then 13.3 pounds of sugar to 13.3 pounds of water is a 1:1 then we have 1 gallon of sucrose plus 1.6 gallons of water (13.3/8.34). Lastly, 1.6 gallons of water out of 2.6 total is about 62% water. Density wise this is 26.6 lbs/2.6 gallons or 10.2 pounds per gallon for 1:1. 

I hope this made sense to someone.


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## Thermwood (May 29, 2010)

LOL I will just stick with dumping a 25 pound bag of sugar in a 5 gallon bucket and fill it up with water to make 5 gallons of 1:1.


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## Fogducker (May 6, 2010)

I'm a small time 1 hive beek. (1 to 1) 4 cups of water, bring to a boil and turn off heat, add 4 cups of sugar and stir into the hot water. NEVER boil the mixture. I pour this into a 1 gallon zip lock, put it in a flattish tupper ware tray so it doesn't leak down on the frames and slit it a few times covered by an empty super box.

Fog


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

Thermwood said:


> LOL I will just stick with dumping a 25 pound bag of sugar in a 5 gallon bucket and fill it up with water to make 5 gallons of 1:1.


There you go making everything too complex. Since I use buckets rarely, drums sometimes, and a tote most of the time my approach allows me to pick a volume line on the tote, add water 45% to that line, and then add sugar up to the line. Since I don't like 1:1 it means I only need to remember 45%.


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## Thermwood (May 29, 2010)

Sorry, I forgot you are one of those bigtime commercial beeks now.........


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## Ueli Hoffmann (Jan 26, 2011)

I like to mix and feed in units of 5 lbs of sugar.

5 lbs sugar and 9 1/2 cups water = 1:1 (sugar:water by weight)
5 lbs sugar and 4 3/4 cups water = 2:1 (sugar:water by weight)


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

As Yoda would say "130 hives, a commercial beekeeper one does not make". 
I just like math. Plus - I have always hated recipes. Now that I think about it - I've never liked any form of conformity. 
The tote works for me because I am lazy and work alone. I much prefer to fill the tote with 3000 lbs of syrup and hit all the apiaries in one trip. When I have more colonies, it will require another tote. The syrup pump and a 1" gas pump nozzle make for fast work.


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## Seymore (May 1, 2009)

Wow...did I just luck out or what? Since my hummer feed was 4:1 - 4 cups water to 1 cup sugar, I just did the same conversion for the 1:1 - for 1 cup water, I used 1 cup sugar. So for 1 qt. water I used 4 cups sugar, extrap to a gallon and I used 16 cups of sugar. Can u scientists tell me - what the heck ratio is that? It seemed to work... ???


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfeeding.htm#ratios

Measuring ratios for syrup.

The standard mixtures are 1:1 in the spring and 2:1 in the fall (sugar:water). People often use something other than those for their own reasons. Some people use 2:1 in the spring because it's easier to haul around and keeps better. Some people use 1:1 in the fall because they believe it stimulates brood rearing and they want to be sure to have young bees going into winter. The bees will manage either way. I use more like 5:3 (sugar:water) all the time. It keeps better than 1:1 and is easier to dissolve than 2:1.

The next argument is over weight or volume. If you have a good scale you can find this out for yourself, but take a pint container, tare it (weigh it empty) and fill it with water. The water will weigh very close to a pound. Now take a dry pint container, tare it (weigh it empty) and fill it with white sugar and weight it. It will weigh very close to a pound. So I'll keep this very simple. For the sake of mixing syrup for feeding bees, it just doesn't matter. You can mix and match. "A pints a pound the world around" as far as dry white sugar and water are concerned. At least until you've mixed the syrup. So if you take 10 pints of water, boil it, and add 10 pounds of sugar you'll get the same thing as if you took 10 pounds of water, boil it, and add 10 pints of sugar.

The next confusion seems to be on how much it takes to make how much syrup. The volume of 10 pints of water and 10 pints of sugar will make about 15 pints of syrup, not 20. The sugar and the water fit together.

Don't confuse the issue of how you measure. Measure before you mix. In other words, you can't fill a container 1/3 of the way with water, and add sugar until it's 2/3 full and have 1:1 syrup. You'll get more like 2:1 syrup. Likewise, you can't fill it 1/3 of the way with sugar and then add water until it's 2/3 full and have 1:1 syrup. You'll get more like 1:2. You have to measure both separately and then put them together to get an accurate measurement. I find the easiest is to use pints for water and pounds for sugar since the sugar comes in packages marked in pounds and volume is easy to measure for water. So if you know you are going to add 10 pounds of sugar and you want 1:1 then start with 10 pints of boiling water and add the 10 pounds of sugar.


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

Seymore said:


> Wow...did I just luck out or what? Since my hummer feed was 4:1 - 4 cups water to 1 cup sugar, I just did the same conversion for the 1:1 - for 1 cup water, I used 1 cup sugar. So for 1 qt. water I used 4 cups sugar, extrap to a gallon and I used 16 cups of sugar. Can u scientists tell me - what the heck ratio is that? It seemed to work... ???


You really can't extrapolate to a gallon the way you tried because at 16 cups of sugar you also have a full gallon of water (according to your recipe). But as Michael said above, since you have two pints of each it amounts to a 1:1. And, again, as Michael indicated, you won't end up with 4 pints of syrup.
I think as a side note there seems to be two camps here. One wants to know how much sugar and water to add together for a particular ratio without a concern for the resulting volume. Others want to make up a certain volume to fill multiple feeders (like me). The problem with the latter is that crystalline sugar takes up a much larger volume than when in solution. If you fill a 55 gallon drum to the very top with sugar (about eight 50 lb bags) and then top it up with water you have about 55 gallons of 2:1. Or you can add water to the 45% mark and then fill to the top with sugar. Either way you end up with a known volume that will fill about 27 two gallon feeders. Other methods that direct you to mix a certain amount of sugar to a certain amount of water give the correct ratio but not a final volume. If you use a tote, they usually have a volume scale on one corner so any volume desired can be made by using 45% of the final volume in water for 2:1 or about 60% of the final volume in water for 1:1. If you just want a 5 gallon bucket of 1:1 you can do what Thermwood does and add a 25 lb bag of sugar and fill to the top with water. There are many ways of approaching this and most will be just fine by the bees. I actually lean a bit towards Michael's 5:3 ratio for the same reasons given.


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## WilliamsHoneyBees (Feb 17, 2010)

I don't think the bees really care how close you get to 1:1 or 2:1 as long as they are getting light syrup and heavy syrup. Here is my recipe

1:1 5 pounds of sugar (80 weight ounces) with 80 ounces of water (fluid ounces) 

2:1 5 pounds of sugar (80 weight ounces) with 40 ounces of water (fluid ounces. 

I read somewhere to figure an ounce is an ounce the world around for simplicity. It's not true because different waters from different regions will contain different amounts of minerals and will weight different. However they are bees they just don't care how close you get it. I feed my 1:1 to stimulate and during times when they can evaporate off the extra moisture and I feed 2:1 in the fall to build up their stores. Like Mr. Bush feeding 5:3 you may find something that they like to take down a little faster. I have no problems with what I feed.


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## honeyman46408 (Feb 14, 2003)

> I don't think the bees really care how close you get to 1:1 or 2:1 as long as they are getting light syrup and heavy syrup.


 :applause:


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## tommyt (Aug 7, 2010)

:ws

Weight?= Volume? Egg? Chicken? Oh! Oh! The Bees 

:ws


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## Seymore (May 1, 2009)

Wow again. I love ignorance. I tuled along all summer making my "1:1" and the bees seemed to love it. Or at least drank it all up! Let me see tho. Trying to wrap my head around this all, so I'm thinking out loud. Mike, if you take 1O pounds sugar to 10 pints water, pare that down to 1 pound sugar (16 ounces) to 1 pint water (16 ounces).... 2 pints in a quart.... 1 quart is 4 cups..... 16 cups in a gallon..... I end up right back where I started. I'll have to do more reading on this so I can glean the subtleties. Regardless, I sure appreciate all you folks sharing your vast experience with us newbies!


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## Ueli Hoffmann (Jan 26, 2011)

Michael Bush said:


> "A pints a pound the world around"


Except in an English pub serving traditional 20 oz imperial pints where "a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter".


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

Seymore said:


> Wow again. I love ignorance. I tuled along all summer making my "1:1" and the bees seemed to love it. Or at least drank it all up! Let me see tho. Trying to wrap my head around this all, so I'm thinking out loud. Mike, if you take 1O pounds sugar to 10 pints water, pare that down to 1 pound sugar (16 ounces) to 1 pint water (16 ounces).... 2 pints in a quart.... 1 quart is 4 cups..... 16 cups in a gallon..... I end up right back where I started. I'll have to do more reading on this so I can glean the subtleties. Regardless, I sure appreciate all you folks sharing your vast experience with us newbies!


Again - we all understand that the bees don't care and that some of this may be a bit OCD, but misconceptions have a tendency to boil over into wine and beer making, cooking, and every other hobby. When you take 1 pound of sugar and say that is 16 oz, that is by weight not volume. So you can't say 16 oz (weight) of dry sugar is 2 pints (volume). It is common for solids to be placed in solution based on weight per unit volume because solids can occupy very different volumes based on their particle size. One pound of powdered sugar, table sugar and cubed sugar would make for very different volumes. As an example, a gallon of dry table sugar would weigh about 8 pounds. If you add water to that to the one gallon mark, the sugar will go into solution and only occupy about 55% of that gallon with 45% being water. So now you have a full gallon of dry sugar taking up about half that amount of space just by dissolving. It is really a huge distinction when making fruit wines where it is common to add sugar. The resulting alcohol content is vastly different if you measure by percent by volume v.s. percent by weight. If you don't believe it - make up both ways and use either a hydrometer or refractometer to measure the difference - vastly different numbers. But, again, the bees like sweet water.


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## Seymore (May 1, 2009)

So are you gents telling me that somewhere there is a recipe that state 1:1 weight:volume? It really doesn't matter, as all have pretty much said . . . I'm just a curious sort. 

Ueli, a pint's a pint..... that makes me think of a 2x4 board ..... 2"x4"? I don't think so! Not anymore!


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

Sorry - I think I just made it more confusing. In the sciences it is common to weigh a solid and bring it up to a certain volume in a graduated cylinder or volumetric flask. This yields weight per volume. In the case of dry sugar, its weight is nearly the same as its volume (e.g. oz) because it is packed with a lot of air space. So when syrup is made the expected volume is well below the initial combined volumes of water and sugar. As an example, if you added 1 pint of dry sugar to a pint of water you would have a 1:1 solution but it would not make a quart of syrup. So with either weight per weight or volume per volume (with sugar) you will end up with less syrup than expected because all the void air space in the crystalline sugar is lost. 
This makes a difference when you add sugar according to the Brix scale (wine making), which is weight per weight and accidentally bring your solution up to a volume line which would be weight per volume. At 23 Brix we would have 23 grams of sugar to 77 grams of water. When the two are combined in a graduated cylinder you would be below the 100 ml level. Now if you made the mistake of adding water to the 100 ml mark (weight per volume) it would dilute the solution down below 23 Brix. In wine making, you just lost some alcohol content and may have ended up with a terrible wine that is prone to spoil. 
I hope I didn't make that even more confusing. Bottom line - with bees it doesn't matter much. The only reason I approach making syrup a little differently is because I want to know the final volume. If that doesn't matter then either weight/weight or volume/volume is close enough.
In my previous post where I said you can't equate dry sugar mass to volume, for all practical purposes they are about the same as long as it is standard table sugar. Powdered sugar, or sugar with different size crystals will vary. It is just not a good habit to equate volume with mass.
It was probably kind of dumb on my part to post this here when it is probably only meaningful in the mead making section.


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## Seymore (May 1, 2009)

Well.... that cleared it up for ME!


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## chillardbee (May 26, 2005)

Don't use volume measurements or a hybrid of volume and weight, it'll just mess you up. to get a 1:1 by wieght, just measure the the weight of each in equal amounts. that give you the truest mix. example: 4 pounds water + 4 pounds sugar = 8 pounds of 1:1 syrup. this is 50% moisture at feeding, 30% of this wieght will be lost to evaporation at X% will be lost to supply the energy in handling it. a 2:1 will have 33% and will lose 13-15% moisture to evaporation, considerably less, which is why it is prefered for fall feeding, where as the 1:1 is prefered for building up and stimulating colonies in the spring.


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## Seymore (May 1, 2009)

I do hope to try mead one of these days, so this is probably really good discussion for me. And I DO appreciate expanding my knowledge base. Cuz I do so want my bees to be happy!! Thanks again. Great question Stooge! I'm a newbie too, in case it wasn't obvious.


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## ccar2000 (Aug 9, 2009)

Seymore,
I am also interested in trying to make mead
Have you discovered the Bounty of the hive forum?
http://www.beesource.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=256
There is a whole forum dedicated to home brewing there. 
With a great thread for beginners.
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=231128
I feel another hobby coming on!


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## Seymore (May 1, 2009)

Ccar - no, have not seen that site. Sounds great - will check it out soon - THANKS! I've had my eye on the book The Compleat Meadmaker, have read great reviews on that. Yes, burgeoning hobby!


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Don't use volume measurements or a hybrid of volume and weight, it'll just mess you up. to get a 1:1 by wieght, just measure the the weight of each in equal amounts. that give you the truest mix. example: 4 pounds water + 4 pounds sugar = 8 pounds of 1:1 syrup. 

But a 4 pints of water will still weigh 4 pounds and 8 pounds of sugar will still fill 8 pints...


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## HVH (Feb 20, 2008)

It does work but could cause problems for those that don't understand why. Even in bread making it is considered better practice to weigh the flour rather than use measuring cups. But you are right - it just so happens that the weight in ounces is very similar to the volume in ounces when it comes to standard table sugar. Get in the habit and apply the same thinking to another solid - and oops.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Granted, a pint is not a pound of honey, nor a pound of syrup nor a pound of many things, but it does work plenty well enough for sugar and water for syrup for bees.


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## stasn (Apr 7, 2015)

Michael Bush said:


> But a 4 pints of water will still weigh 4 pounds and 8 pounds of sugar will still fill 8 pints...


Michael, according to the below sources, *granulated sugar* conversion, volume to mass is:
1 pint = 0.882 pounds
1.25 pints = 1 pound
8 pints = 7.055 pounds
9 pints = 8 pounds


http://www.traditionaloven.com/culi...ite-sugar-to-gallon-gal-granulated-sugar.html
http://onlineconversion.vbulletin.n...-lbs-of-white-granulated-sugar-in-55-gal-drum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

And water is actually 8.34 pounds per gallon, or 1.0425 pounds per pint. But, I think the point is, using pints as equivalent measures is *close enough*! 

After all, its just _sugar water_, and the exact ratio is not critical.


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## frustrateddrone (Jan 31, 2015)

This is a pretty nice video on Feeding. I didn't want to start a new thread. Heaven knows a bazillion threads on feeding are on here already.


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

HVH said:


> ...The only reason I approach making syrup a little differently is *because I want to know the final volume*. If that doesn't matter then either weight/weight or volume/volume is close enough....


Most of the time, 'close enough' is close enough for me- except when I'm making a batch to be dosed with Fumagilin. I want a particular final volume to mix a particular amount of Fum-B to get the correct dose that will be divided between a particular number of hives...without wasting any $$.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

For 1:1 I put 5 quarts of water into a canner like you use for canning pickles or jelly...
Get the water boiling and add 10# of sugar. Makes nearly 2 gallons of syrup.
The plastic gallon jugs that Arizona Tea comes in are perfect for toting syrup to the yards.
Four gallons fit into one of them milk crates. The bees like it if served still warm.


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