Christine Gray wrote:

>Spirited defense of USA beekeeping from Bob, as expected!
>Of course starving bees must be fed - but if they are rearing brood -
>especially those longer living winter bees - then feeding sugar rather than
>honey will risk breeding weak deficient bodies.
>
Not if there is pollen around, and if there is not, all the honey in
China will not help.  The bees could not possible metabolize away enough
of the sugar in honey to effectively mine out enough protein or fat to
raise kids.  The energetics involved in using honey as anything other
than a source of calories makes this impractical.  Bees use it as a
source of energy, period.  The respiratory quotient (RQ) for honey use
is darn close to 1 - meaning that it is simply and efficiently converted
to carbon dioxide, and the ATP siphoned off.

>The fructose large beekeepers buy in drums is probably better than the dry
>sucrose small beekeepers buy at the grocery, but it is still refined and
>contains only carbohydrate.  That is an energy food only.
>
Just like honey.  Bees store honey for energy and pollen for tissue
growth.  The two are decidedly separate in the hive - and with good reason.

> If bees can
>collect
>pollen, the nurse beees will be able to secrete proper brood food - but if
>bees
>are starving in the drought, are there any pollen sources?
>
Nope, and in that instance the bees would only be keeping what adults
they have alive.  There would be no protein for de-novo tissue
production, which in a bee colony means kids.  Having said that, there
is not enough protein in honey to allow for brood rearing either, so . .
. . . you can see where that leads.

> And larvae are
>fed part brood food and part nectar/honey.
>
Production of brood food is dependent on pollen intake.

>I realise syrup costs less than feeding back honey - but do beekeepers
>follow the logic right thru?  Feeding their own children sugar water will
>keep them alive , although thin, pasty and with perpetually dripping noses
>as their immune systems will not fully develop.
>
Two points.  A) it will not keep them alive, at least for any real
length of time, and they won't have to worry about snotty noses, cause
that will be the least of their problems.  So put down that rock candy
kids!  B) Think feeding honey would change the outcome?  Think again.

> Greed is a bad basis for
>designing management systems , whether for companies, families or bees.
>But I will always bow to research over intuitive feelings and anecdotes.
>
No one is suggesting that greed is the way to go.  Research?  Its out
there.

>Artificial honey made from autumn sugar feeds is undoubtedly better for
>winteing, as all the bees need then is fuel to maintain warmth and sugar
>honey leaves no residues (as it has no body) needing to be voided - but
>winter is when there is no brood being reared.
>
Not in my hives.  We have brood the whole time through.

>  However if too much honey
>has been stripped out and replaced only with sugar honey,  I really do doubt
>if the vital replacement bees reared in Jan-March will be strong, long-lived
>and healthy.
>
Why - are your colonies pollen deficient?  The thing that builds a
strong bee is protein and fat.  The energy to drive the process can be
from syrup or honey, makes no difference.  In the end ATP is ATP, or is
someone point to tell me that the ATP derived from honey has better
harmonics than the ATP from Dixie Crystals?.  Can you name a necessary
substance (not sugar), found in honey, but not syrup, that is not also
found in far more massive quantities in pollen?

>  If they are, it implies that the health-giving properies of
>honey that are so appreciated by humans are of no consequence to bees and
>are in plants purely as an un-needed by-product - nature rarely seems to
>work
>like that.
>
Maybe the "health-giving" properties of honey are simply not that big a
deal for anyone, and are the result of overplaying anecdote and wishful
thinking, or clever marketing.    Maybe honey is simply a wonderful,
tasty, beautiful, supersaturated solution of sugar and not some mythical
life-giving elixir.  Can't it simply be appreciated for what it is?

>  Has research really been aimed at that point?
>It was you yourself , Bob, who recently wondered why beekeepers in the USA
>today have such dificulty in keeping their bees alive.
>
Have we not heard of considerable losses in many parts of Europe?

Keith "don't confuse the presence of a molecule of two of something with
the necessity of its presence, in the end it may simply be tolerated and
not required" Benson

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