If a cocktail of Li salts proves to be: safe for bees, safe for honey and merciless on Varroa, bring it on. I could use another such weapon in the Varroa arsenal.

But may I pipe up and take issue with the equivalency of pollen sub and sucrose syrup fed to bees as junk food is to little human beings? They are not to bees as a cola and kraft dinner diet is to children.

Floral nectars must surely have some trace elements in them but are largely sugar syrup. Pollen sub may not be as good for bees as the best of the natural pollens, and I would like to see more research into improving their content, but they are very useful, if not required in areas lacking good all season forage opportunities, or which are thin on superior pollens.

Provided foods like sugar syrup and pollen sub also share the benefit of being free of agri-sprays, which are ubiquitous in my berry/potato/corn growing area...where we also have to be concerned about what is sprayed on residential gardens. I am sure that much of the nectar and pollen my bees bring in has a little soupçon of herbicide/fungicide/fertilizer/pesticide on top.

This makes calls to beekeepers with dying colonies frustrating when the beekeeper tells me they do not feed in dearth/winter or provide Varroa treatments because that would be poisoning their bees. I run into one or two of these situations every year. 

My bees would probably laugh at the idea they do not live a natural life. They carry on with what bees do and roam freely, and tolerate my tweaking their little homes. I suspect if they could review my performance, they feel my efforts to feed and care for them when necessary are poor recompense for the harm done by exposing them to developed landscapes, Varroa and agri-sprays. But now, we are stuck with each other! They probably would be quite content to hear I lie awake at night worrying about what they need  : )

I like to use productivity on the part of the bees to measure my skill as a beekeeper. For that reason alone it has value. It also has value in underwriting the apiary expenses and allowing me to explore better methods of beekeeping.

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