To leave honey for the bees - or not?

[busybee53]

Sugar is getting expensive. Honey is a natural product that the bees have worked hard for.

A recent article said not to leave the bees their own honey as they may not be able to get enough water in the winter to be able to use the honey. The article recommended giving syrup.

Another beek has the opinion that honey is best as it has all the bees natural antibiotics in it.

There is no OSR in this area though the bees may well find ivy which I understand granulates.

What do forum member think about leaving honey for the bees to overwinter instead of giving syrup?

 

[tonybloke]

hope you've got your tin hat on!!

 

[busybee53]

You will notice I am hiding behind the fact that neither of the views given are mine.

 

[Chris Luck]

You can never be wrong in leaving bees honey, it's their natural food even ivy, if they collect it they can use it.

Conditions permitting it should be possible to take the summer yield if there is one and still leave enough time / forage for the bees to build up their own winter reserves. My production hives will usually do this in an OK year with no need for extra feeding and all of this years new colonies will have provided for them selves.

Chris

 

[Phayze]

Just ask yourself why do bees store honey in the first place, I think but haven't tried it that syrup may freeze that is why fondant is usually suggested as a winter feed or supplement to their own stores

 

[Be4]

Syrup doesn't freeze if you feed it to them before it gets too cold. They reduce to the same water content as honey and cap it in the usual way.

 

[Polyanwood]

I don't think it really matters. There are advantages to both.

Neither will freeze - sugar % will be identically too high to freeze.
Honey may contain traces of pathogens (AFB stores ceratinly survive in honey...what else?)
Syrup can contain things that help protect against Nosema.. thymol, and for a little while longer FumidilB.
Syrup does not contain the trace elements, vitamins and minerals that honey does, so it may be a less complete food
If you feed syrup when the ivy flow in on in reduces the amount of comb that is filled with crystallised stores, which they can eat, but seem to like less and which seem to sometimes slow them down in the Spring when they are trying to expand the brood nest.

Honey is worth a lot more that sugar, and some people need the money.

 

[Chris Luck]

Well honey may indeed contain traces of pathogens including AFB but if it's their own honey or honey from your own apiaries that's irrelevant.

I should say Polyanawood that I disagree completely with your views on Ivy, I've never experienced any downside to it and my bees pile it in.

Chris

 

[Finman]

.
Sugar is as good as honey as winter food. You may have what ever feelings but no problen in sugar wintering.

Honey has only energy. Pollen has all other nutritiens what bees need.
If bees do not get pollen, liken in very dry late summer, hives may die.
Hives have never die for sugar.

Sugar is cheap. Never rising to prices of sugar. Autumn honey has often strong aroma and very good to give taste to rape honey or clover honey.


The main reason to use excluder is to robb all honey off. That is why professional use excluder over the first box.

 

[Polyanwood]

My guess is that the proportion of glucose in different types of ivy must be fairly stable, so it can't be that which makes the difference. I wonder whether at my apiary in the woods (where I see this problem every year) the difference is that the autumn flow is almost uniquely ivy... Ivy not a problem in Spring at my 3 other apiaries. At the apiary in the woods, by the Spring the ivy honey is as hard as a sugar mouse.

 

[Finman]

I don't think it really matters.


Syrup does not contain the trace elements, vitamins and minerals that honey does, so it may be a less complete food

Honey does not contain either. Special nutritients are in pollen.

.keep cool!

 

[Chris Luck]

Finman, I know you like a laugh but come on be serious.

Honey has numerous constituent parts besides being just "sugar" which is why it is illegal to sell "sugar honey" as honey, but then perhaps you aren't too fussy with your own dietary needs?

Chris

 

[Finman]

Finman, I know you like a laugh but come on be serious.

Honey has numerous constituent parts besides being just "sugar" which is why it is illegal to sell "sugar honey" as honey, but then perhaps you aren't too fussy with your own dietary needs?

Chris

if you look labortory tests what honey has, you need not use your positive imagination.

I have not said that sugar is honey. iI DO NoT MIX MY DIETARY NEEDS WITH LABORATORY FACTS.
Look fineli.fi english version.

I have wintered my bees with sugar 50 years.

Me myself eate Norwegian salmon on rye bread. Caeras Dressing as incrediment is deligious.

A Finnish sitizen uses 35 kg sugar in a year and 0,5 kg honey. So you see that even human survive with sugar over winter.

 

[Polyanwood]

Honey does not contain either. Special nutritients are in pollen.

.keep cool!

I have been blundering through the BBKA exams and the syllabus on honey definitely says that honey contains minerals and vitamins and trace elements, but if I have to choose betweeen BBKA and Finman in realtion to who takes the most evidene based approach, I guess I would choose Finman as more reliable.

 

[MartinL]

............... I think but haven't tried it that syrup may freeze that is why fondant is usually suggested as a winter feed or supplement to their own stores

Syrup doesn't freeze if you feed it to them before it gets too cold. They reduce to the same water content as honey and cap it in the usual way.

errr,,,,,,, The temperature inside the hive ensures that nothing will freeze!!!!

 

[Polyanwood]

errr,,,,,,, The temperature inside the hive ensures that nothing will freeze!!!!

Only if you have poly hives and even then in the middle of winter the temperature at the extremities of the hive may fall below 0C even if the bees are in a cosy cluster.

 

[Ziggymole]

Surely, in the natural order of things, bees eat honey, and although they can survive on honey substitutes i.e syrup it's just that, a substitute.

(tin hat on, hides behind flack barricade)

 

[Chris Luck]

A human can live on crap for a while, many do and become ill, it proves nothing because I think we should all know by now that some diets are better for us than others - my view is that it's the same for bees.

A cursory search supports the view and the science that backs it that there is more than just "sugar" in honey, and I would venture to suggest that it's the "little things" that make the difference as it is with human food.

http://www.honey-health.com/honey-6.shtml

In addition to the two invert sugars, honey contains aromatic volatile oils, which bestow its flavor, mineral elements (sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, phosphorus, etc.), some protein, various enzymes, vitamins and coloring matter.

I really don't know how you got that job with the Honey marketing board.

Chris

 

[Finman]

.
Chris. i suppose that you have slept in school when there was chemistry teaching.

So if you know, tell me what vitamins honey bee needs. i warn you. It is difficult to find out from Internet.

HINT: If a human want to get c-vitamin from honey, he needs to eate 12 kg honey a day.

.

 

[Finman]

A human can live on crap for a while, m
Chris

I am 65 now. Is that " a while". ...in Finland we have not that bad conditions. We live long if alcohol does not kill.

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