One of our Master's students did a comparison this spring of water sources, and bees liked dirty water.


Water quality can certainly contribute to problems.  For example, in eastern MT, many of the deep wells are artesian, high in FL.  In one case, a stock tank connected to a free flowing (no shut-off -- illegal) well, created a muddy bog around the tank, and the sun evaporated the artesian water - resulting in bee poisoning.  We published this years ago in an EPA report.  In Maryland, on Aberdeen Proving Grounds, we trace several heavy metals and other toxic chemicals to the water in swampy areas that the bees were using.


In hot weather, some of these toxins can transfer to honey - evaporative cooling resulted in contaminated water contamining wax, and then some of the chemicals partitioned back out into the nectar/honey.


It's also clear that lots of microbes, viruses, etc. can transfer to bees from the water that they collect for cooling and drinking.


Also in MT, one long-ago commercial beekeeper put troughs under his hives instead of pallets.  He wanted to collect rain water, so that the bees didn't have to fly far to get water.  Not unexpectantly, the experiment failed because of the mold and fungus that thrived in the dank water, and the bees did poorly.





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