How to : Feeding fondant

Regular readers, and those who have taken the time to rummage through the archives, will know I'm a big fan of using fondant for all my autumn and winter feeding. It's something I've been doing for over 15 years, and — except for feeding of colonies when queen rearing or mating {{1}} — it's the only way I feed sugar to my bees at any time of the year.However, in looking back though the cobwebby archives I realise that the information is rather diffusely spread.I've regularly discussed 'opening a block of fondant over the hive and leaving them to get on with things', but have less frequently mentioned nucleus colonies or mini-nucs. Even more rarely have I acknowledged the small number of (minor) problems that may occur when feeding fondant, and how to avoid them.Early September {{2}} seemed like a good time to prepare a comprehensive post on feeding fondant, covering the why, how and when of the topic, and addressing some 'edge cases' (as someone debugging a computer program would call…