I believe you probably nailed the reason the bees are "drinking" from the chicken blood.   They are looking for salts or other trace minerals.    I noticed bees use to flock to the little expandable peat pots you start seeds in, even though the bees had plenty of other water sources.   They seemed to be after something being released through the peat/potting mixture (salts/mineral traces from fertilizers?).

For the past 2 years I have periodically added  a pinch of salt to the water sources I maintain at my different bee yards.   I also add up to 1/2 teaspoon of plain original unscented chlorine bleach per quart of water which gets added to the water source.    The bees appear to prefer this over "plain water" (water without salt or bleach in it).  It definitely seems to keep them from seeking out the neighbors swimming pool.   Just make sure you are wearing your old clothes or bee clothes when adding the bleach to the water.

Instead of using salt directly, if you eat "salted in the shell peanuts", you can toss some of the shells into the water source as the salt from the shells will leach into the water.    What spawned this idea was I noticed bees were landing on the peanut shells we had tossed/dropped in the grass of one of the bee yards.    Instead of making the bees a peanut butter sandwich, we speculated they were after the salts or other trace minerals in the shells.

Just do not go overboard as TOO MUCH salt or TOO MUCH bleach will definitely be fatal to the bees, so if you are going to try it, start with small amounts.   It appears they recently reformulated the good old fashion bleach and made it 33% more concentrated.    So you may want to just add 1/4 teaspoon of bleach per quart of water if all you can find is the 33% more concentrated bleach.    Stay with the unscented as I have no idea what is added to bleach to make it not smell like bleach.

Steve

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