"We also had hundreds of my bees  lining around the edges of our outdoor hot
tub (warm water with body oils/salts and chlorine) in spite of  
the fact that they had to fly over a pond and a river to get there.   
Do bees need salt?  Would a salt lick satisfy them?"

I had a pool for 20 years. The first 18 I used Bacquacil, and rarely had
honeybees in it. When Bacquacil suddenly quit working (I swear they changed
the formula), I switched to Chlorine, which the bees found much more
attractive.

On the subject of salt, I had a beginner ask last month how she should best
feed her bees salt, as she had read in a book that she needed to. Turns out
what she'd read was an online excerpt from a book from the 1800s! Does
anyone know if it used to be common practice to feed salt to bees?

Eugene Makovec
Missouri USA

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