Jerry Bromenshenk wrote:
>  
> Maybe the list can help out here -- to the best of our knowledge, honeydew  
> may be a poor nutrient, but isn't toxic.   There's a complex set of  issues, 
> including microbes in the gut, that all interplay and  may eventually kill bees.
>   
The Hive and the Honeybee has a couple of sections about honeydew, as 
well as references. I did a bit of searching about honeydew in the past 
because my bees suffered from it as an overwinter feed. I agree that 
honeydew is an unlikely cause of the problem, but it can be toxic to 
bees. It depends on the honeydew. There are lots of honeydews and but 
only a few are toxic. It mostly has to do with the minerals in the 
honeydew, which means the minerals collected by the insect and processed 
into honeydew and collected by the bees. There is a lot of good science 
on honeydew and honeydew honeys. One thing to remember is that the bees 
are not collecting simple sugars processed by plants, but have an 
intermediate insect processor with all their added enzymes. Honeydew is 
a very interesting and complex sugar source for bees.
>  
> But, at least in CA, the bees collapse rather slowly, over the winter,  when 
> they are living on a high enough percentage of honeydew in their stored  food.
>   
This was exactly the symptoms my bees "enjoyed" because of honeydew. My 
conjecture (since I do not remember if I read this in relation to 
honeydew) is they suffer because of the high water content of the 
honeydew and that it does granulate, but not completely. So you can have 
a transition phase where you have fermentation of the sugars and that is 
what harms the bees. This fermentation process  is well known as a  
problem for overwintered bees and partially granulated honey.
> Based on the reports that we have, the yards that we visited, the colony  
> collapse is rapid - 2 to 3 weeks or less.  
>   
Toxic honeydew is plant/insect specific, so you would have this problem 
all the time in certain areas and not universally.

In my experience, honeydew is a gradual killer, not a quick one. So I 
agree with you that it is not honeydew, no matter how bad honeydew may 
be for overwintering. It is also true that it is probably part of the 
problem in California, since honeydew is a terrible overwintering honey.

As an aside, it is a great flavored honey and prized in many areas where 
it is found. I harvest some every fall.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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