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I’d be interested to know more too. I think HFCS is roughly 50/50 fructose/glucose, the same as sucrose after it’s been inverted, and honey. I have not seen any reference to the molecules being a different shape. I think HFCS has a bad rap compared to beet or cane sugar because it is so cheap...

Thanks, that’s helpful. So when a bee is taking syrup from the feeder into its honey stomach, it is involuntarily mixing invertase - other enzymes - with it and the sucrose is being broken down into glucose and fructose. Its then stored in comb and dehydrated in the normal way, presumably down...

Corn syrup is mostly glucose isn’t it, and that is a sugar. Unless it is further processed to convert some of the glucose to fructose and then you get high fructose corn syrup corn. It’s still sugar though. Invertbee, which is a premium cost syrup made for beekeepers, is made from sucrose...

I don’t see why not. The bees use invertase to invert sucrose. Can they turn this off - why would they want to when processing syrup. We produce invertase in our saliva all the time. I don’t see why not. The bees use invertase to invert sucrose. Can they turn this off - why would they want to-...

But nectar contains a lot of sucrose, as well as fructose and glucose. That’s why bees need to secrete invertase, in order to invert the sucrose, which presumably they would do whether the sucrose is in nectar or syrup.

So what is it that gives honey its distinctive taste? Whatever the honey was made of it still has an unmistakeable flavour. You might be able to detect the added flavours from lime, blackberry, heather or OCR but where is the underlying honey taste coming from. Is it from nectar or from the...

I’ve been feeding my bees 2:1 sugar-to-water syrup. They’ve taken down a lot. I was inspecting a couple of hives today and was reminded that there is little difference if any in in appearance between processed and stored nectar, ie “honey”, and processed and stored syrup ie “sugar hobey”. What...

What do you do to help the bees find room when you’re taking the supers off? For example, I have a strong double brood national hive, with 4 supers I’m about to remove. I don’t have any spare brood boxes, but maybe enough ekes to put on to help. What, if anything, do others add to give the bees...

I hope beekeeping wasn’t one of the grounds for your divorce. I guess it wouldn’t be the first time 😊

I guess it depends partly on if you are using a kitchen or dedicated bee shed.

In the last I have extracted all our honey in one day and cleaned everything up immediately. This year it’s going to be done over 2 days at least with a few days in between. Do beekeepers normally clean up each day during the extraction process or only after the last day? I’m talking about the...

I’ve become obsessed with true meaning of “shirtsleeve” weather. The only logical explanation is that it referred to the typical beekeeper of 100 years ago who wore a three piece suit (even working men such as the gamekeeper in Lady Chatterley’s Lover would where this) When it got warmer, he...

Squirt of air freshener instead of newspaper?

Does it make any difference whether the cappings are “wet” or “dry”?

There is no point bees fanning at the entrance where this is an open mesh floor. Whether they are “sucking” or “ blowing”, any current they try to create at the entrance is completely disrupted by the much larger opening that is the floor.

Yes but why do you want the paint on a hive to breath?

I think it does but why do you want it to breath?

I paint my hives with white masonry paint. Some are cedar and some are pine. Although cedar does not rot, it can get rather porous and in winter the wood can be sodden. I’m also glad that in this current heat wave, the white paint reflects the heat better than unpainted hives.

I’ve just gone out to the garage to find the answer to your question and I can say that a National 12x14 brood frame definitely does NOT fit.