Can feeding bees do them harm ?

[The Drone Ranger]

Read this little article today and must admit I'm not sure what to make of it

http://beeinformed.org/2014/06/feeding-honeybees-honey-may-increase-mortality/


Its from America where they do things slightly differently

[Jon]

The article fails to mention available pollen in terms of overwintering.

Maybe the colonies being fed extra sugar or honey were weak in the first place which would account for the higher winter mortality.

[The Drone Ranger]

Its aparrently quite a big sample size but I suppose they might have missed some of the other factors

[nemphlar]

Yes I wondered if they were feeding only the weak hives that were short of stores. Recovering frames from dead hives seems a bit short sighted.
Smith singles when successful will have the supers removed leaving them with half empty brood boxes and will almost always need feeding, certainly in the west, thymolated syrup in my case. Also there's late pollen to build on. It would be interesting to know what late season pollen is available in his area

[The Drone Ranger]

Yes I wondered if they were feeding only the weak hives that were short of stores. Recovering frames from dead hives seems a bit short sighted.
Smith singles when successful will have the supers removed leaving them with half empty brood boxes and will almost always need feeding, certainly in the west, thymolated syrup in my case. Also there's late pollen to build on. It would be interesting to know what late season pollen is available in his area

Hi Nemphlar
I never move brood combs around if I can help it in case of Chalk Brood
Like yourself the Smith box usually need some food I find

I thought some of the guys on here would have all the scientific bee research on feeding etc
Theres always been the argument about whether they winter well on heather honey etc
I'm not a big fan of crystalised rape honey as a winter feed but I doubt it does the bees any harm
It's more to do with them needing water to make use of it unlike liquid stores

[Mellifera Crofter]

The surveys were taken from April of one year to March of the following year, but in the two surveys referred to, the word 'winter' appears in the top left-hand corner - so do these figures refer to winter results only? If they do, then I wonder whether the bad results for honey frames and sugar syrup might not reflect the fact that bees cluster in the winter and that the food might have been out of reach? Even if the figures do refer to the whole year, mightn't the cluster problem over winter still have affected the figures to show a negative result?

(Candy was positive the first year. I don't know about the second year. If it was a negative in the second year like the other methods then my cluster idea is probably wrong.)
Kitta

[Little_John]

Read this little article today and must admit I'm not sure what to make of it


Personally I'd ignore it. The survey appears to be based on a dimensionless unit called 'a colony' - which is pretty meaningless in quantitative terms. What exactly constitutes a 'colony' ? To then apply statistical analysis to the data is so much window-dressing - or as an Irish friend of mine used to say: "like applying lipstick to a pig".

Also, as a simple survey, control hives within apiaries were non-existent - so local conditions may have been more significant than the comparison under investigation.

LJ

[The Drone Ranger]

How about this lot
Mostly snoooze inducing technical or scientific stuff


http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/89/21/18/PDF/hal-00892118.pdf

Winter bees
If a winter bee feeds on contaminated nectar,
it will consume 41.8 pg of imidacloprid per day,
or a total of about 3.8 ng during winter, lasting
about 3 months

The lethal toxicity of imidacloprid is in the
range of a few picogramms after repetitive
ingestions of this insecticide over a minimum
period of 8 days

http://agrinews-pubs.com/Content/News/Latest-News/Article/Study--Sugar-diet-may-have-impact-on-honeybee-health/8/6/7139

While bees in the wild feed on honey stored in the hive, those in commercial hives generally are fed a sugar solution after the honey is harvested. That may contribute to an inability to break down enzymes in pesticides.

http://agrinews-pubs.com/Content/News/Latest-News/Article/Study--Sugar-diet-may-have-impact-on-honeybee-health/8/6/7139
Corn syrup might be a problem ?

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/01/18/rsbl.2009.0986.full
or pollen in monoculture ?

http://www.resistantbees.com/fotos/estudio/feeding.pdf
how about invert sugar causing problems
the most significant bee mortality was found during autumn supplemental feeding with acid hydrolysed invert syrup

but Dry brewer's yeast in nutrition significantly affects the longevity of bees. According to
Taranov (2001), bees fed with dry brewer's yeast lived 38, and ones fed with a sugar syrup
22.5 days.

http://ecowatch.com/2013/10/24/key-molecule-links-neonicoinoids-to-bee-viruses/
pesticides again :)

Being a simple soul I just bung on some sugar syrup in Autumn :)

[Rosie]

Being a simple soul I just bung on some sugar syrup in Autumn :)

I'm with you there. I think if they are short of stores then feed them. Owt's better than nowt. If they don't need feeding then don't bother.

[mbc]

If they don't need feeding then don't bother.

The happy circumstance of most of my colonies at the mo :)

[Little_John]

Being a simple soul I just bung on some sugar syrup in Autumn :)

That's pretty-much what I do. If they're light - they definitely get syrup. If their hive can't be hefted, or inspected for some reason - then they get syrup anyway. My thinking being that over-feeding just might cause problems - whereas starvation is guaranteed to be terminal.

LJ