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Date: | Tue, 17 Mar 2020 15:56:22 +0000 |
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"Since acidification of
sugar syrups appears to be critical for bee survival,"
Nectar is not particularly acidic. Some nectars are even alkaline. Yet the honey always ends up acidic. The reason is the bees automatically excrete peroxidase enzymes into the nectar, as part of the ripening process, that oxidize a tiny part of the contained sugar into acids. They also automatically excrete an enzyme into the nectar that causes the mainly sucrose nectar to hydrolyze into fructose and glucose. So, if you feed plain old grocery store sugar to bees you are feeding the equivalent of nectar without the traces of essential oils, alkaloids and other toxins that are generally found in nectar whose only purpose is to poison predators ranging form fungi and bacteria to insects, birds and animals. There is nothing at all in nectar that is known to be of the slightest importance to honey bee health other than sugars. Those sugars are mainly sucrose but generally also contain some fructose and glucose and often small traces of other sugars. The ratios of these substances vary widely depending on the particular flower or honey dew source. Some of those other sugars are indigestible by honey bees.
All you accomplish by adding acid to sugar syrup is to waste your time and money and risk your bees health. This has been well understood for many years and the newest study simply repeats this old knowledge. In spite of science many bee keepers still add various concoctions to their syrup. I think today the one I hear about the most is apple cider vinegar. I find this idea highly amusing. Apple cider vinegar is simply a water solution containing about 5% acetic acid plus tiny traces of tannin to give it the color. The slime is an indigestible material with a chemical structure much like cellulose that the bacteria that oxidize sugar to acetic acid excrete. That bacterial slime has just exactly zero known health benefits to man or honey bees. If you want cellulose in your diet I suggest eating some wood as it is far less costly than vinegar.
Dick
HL Mencken said: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. "
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