Feeding the bees back their own honey

[Finman]

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Once it was reseached AFB from our supermarket honey. Result was that 24% of jars had spores.

Spores of AFB may be seen in laboratory 2 years before the visible signs apper in hives. (by German stuidies)

It was examined too that there was 10 hives in a yard. Then it was feeded AFB contaminated extracted combs back to one hive. Soon all 10 hives had spores. So it seems to be drifting and small roobbing all the time in a yard.

 

[blackcavebees]

Absolutely right. I'd actually put it a bit stronger - highly likely to contain EFB or AFB. The problem being a jar of supermarket honey will contain a mix of honey from many many hives. It only takes one of those hives to infect the whole batch.

I encourage everyone I know to wash their store bought honey jars before throwing them out, for the bees will find them, no doubt

 

[mbc]

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Once it was reseached AFB from our supermarket honey. Result was that 24% of jars had spores.

Spores of AFB may be seen in laboratory 2 years before the visible signs apper in hives. (by German stuidies)

It was examined too that there was 10 hives in a yard. Then it was feeded AFB contaminated extracted combs back to one hive. Soon all 10 hives had spores. So it seems to be drifting and small roobbing all the time in a yard.

Have you a link to the drifting study Finman ?

 

[Dishmop]

Honey is valuble stuff though!

too valuable to save your bees?

 

[Finman]

Have you a link to the drifting study Finman ?

Difficult to say where I find it

 

[steve's bees]

I encourage everyone I know to wash their store bought honey jars before throwing them out, for the bees will find them, no doubt

Absolutely right. I'd actually put it a bit stronger - highly likely to contain EFB or AFB. The problem being a jar of supermarket honey will contain a mix of honey from many many hives. It only takes one of those hives to infect the whole batch.

If this is true then shouldn't we as beeks be pushing at the powers that be to stop the importing of this type of honey into our country's (wich ever one you live in). If you are not allowed to transport bees with AFB or EFB then surely you should not be allowed to transort honey with the same. Yes I know we in the Uk dont produce anywhere near the amount of honey consummed but woundn't this encourage more bee farmers but ultimately there would be less spread of the diseases

 

[Hivemaker.]

If this is true then shouldn't we as beeks be pushing at the powers that be to stop the importing of this type of honey into our country's

Problem is you are just as likely to get it from UK honey, so we would need to ban that as well.

 

[mbc]

Problem is you are just as likely to get it from UK honey, so we would need to ban that as well.

If afb is diagnosed in the UK then the colony is destroyed removing the infective material from the environment.
In other some counties, treatment with antibiotics is commonplace, even blanket prophylactic treatment is practiced. Although the antibiotics stop the proliferation of the bacteria/spores they can still be present in harvested honey, making honey from these countries a much higher risk than UK honey.

 

[Hivemaker.]

If afb is diagnosed in the UK then the colony is destroyed removing the infective material from the environment.

If being the key word, it only takes one super of extracted honey,maybe just one comb, this ends up in a barrel, this is mixed with many barrels.. could = potentially thousands of jars of contaminated honey on the shop/supermarket shelves. We chatted about this subject at a recent BF meeting, and apparently there were three places where infection was most likely to come from, the UK was one of them, China was not top of the list either. But of course i do agree there is a greater risk from imported honey...there is a lot more of it on the shelves than we can produce for a start.

 

[Chris B]

It's the spores that persist in honey rather than the bacteria. I've been told that both AFB and EFB bacteria will survive only a "short" time in honey - makes sense as honey is antibacterial. "Short" is a bit vague and I don't know if thats days, weeks or months, but not years.
Only AFB forms spores so this is why AFB is the problem disease when it comes to traded honey as the vector. By the time any imported honey reaches our shores it's only the AFB spores that have survived.

In this country AFB is relatively rare, and batches of UK honey tend to be relatively small, hence the risk is smaller, but it's still there.

 

[sunhivebee]

OK consensus appears to be : Don't give your bees supermarket honey!

 

[For want of a better word]

Do not feed bees on honey
( the only exception can be as Finman pointed out 2 milliom gazillion posts ago that own apiary / hive is ok )

Anything else is probably contaminated... and sugar is much cheaper!

 

[IBeeHere]

Our regional Bee inspector whilst giving a talk on bee diseases said that most AFB cases in the UK were likley to have come from disguarded jars from imported honey, if this is the case should imported honey be tested before being put on sale?
I am sure this would save a lot of heartache and financial loss for those affected each year.

 

[Skyhook]

too valuable to save your bees?

By that, are you implying that bees overwintered on honey will be healthy, whereas those overwintered on syrup will not? If so, can you provide some evidence to back it up, as it seems to have escaped me.

 

[Dishmop]

My remark was to be taken that as you grab all the honey you can from the bees because of how valuable it is to you, then because they havent got enough to see them thro the winter you have to feed them with sugar that you have to pay for. Work it out pound for pound and you might find that if you take less honey you wont have to buy sugar. I would assume that the bee's own honey would be healthier than sugar. How much does the sugar cost which you feed the bees for them to create 4 frames of sugar honey?

Slight off track:--
Some time back an American on here told us that they did not feed sugar to thier bees. They use some sugar substitute.. Corn? Would seems they dont use sugar like we do. Shortly after that there was a program on TV about this sugar substitute, examining just how unhealthy it is, and when you consider just how big an awful lot of Americans are and the fact that they are the ones suffering from colony collapse........

Watching my obs hive, they dont eat much over the winter anyway.

 

[the beehive lodge]

Watching my obs hive, they dont eat much over the winter anyway.[/QUOTE]

Having an obervation hive myself do you think they don't eat that much due the the temp change in your house aposed to being out in a hive in your back garden /apairy
I have put my bees from mine in a nuc for the winter.

 

[adrian wilford]

i understand that some/most honeys OSR, etc set harder than stored syrup so syrup is easier for the bees to manipulate for eating, thats what i have been told for years, dont have any evidence to be exact though. and if its far from the cluster will the bees move to it? not always from my experience.

 

[BILL.HEARD]

I remember a fews ago now that there was a big rise in AFB in Torquay.
It turned out that empty cans of imported honey was being dumped on the local tip and the local bees found it.

 

[Dishmop]

Watching my obs hive, they dont eat much over the winter anyway.

Having an obervation hive myself do you think they don't eat that much due the the temp change in your house aposed to being out in a hive in your back garden /apairy
I have put my bees from mine in a nuc for the winter.[/QUOTE]

I suppose that it must make a difference to how much they eat.

They eat to stay alive and to generate heat, but as mine are indoors they dont need to generate as much heat as if they were outside, and therefore ate very little over the winter. As soon as the weather got a bit warmer and they started flying, they ate everything that was left, whilst bringing in new stock.

 

[Skyhook]

My remark was to be taken that as you grab all the honey you can from the bees because of how valuable it is to you, then because they havent got enough to see them thro the winter you have to feed them with sugar that you have to pay for. Work it out pound for pound and you might find that if you take less honey you wont have to buy sugar.

Price of honey roughly 10 times the price of sugar.

I would assume that the bee's own honey would be healthier than sugar.

In the classic phrase from management training- 'Assume makes an ass out of U and me'. Do you have any evidence for it? I've never come across any evidence that they overwinter any worse on sugar. I thymolise my syrup to protect the bees from Nosema, I can't do that with honey stores.

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