On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 10:05 PM, Adam Ritchie wrote:

>
> Brother Adam also wrote about bees wintering poorly on ling/heather
> honey.  I am not sure if that is due to hardness or higher particulate
> content.  In this area it seems to be commonly accepted that wintering on
> fall honey (goldenrod,aster, buckwheat) can be hard on bees due to the
> higher particulate content and lack of elimination flights due to the cold
> winters.
>

Buckwheat honey has, I think, a very high particulate content.  I believe
darker honeys have more minerals.   However, buckwheat honey is very
different than goldenrod and aster in that it is very slow to crystallize.
My anecdotal experience is that hives with buckwheat honey stored winter
better than hives with goldenrod and aster.  Buckwheat yards have the best
survival generally of any yards.  So, I would wonder if it is the
crystallization of the honey which is the more important effect than
particulate matter amount for winter survival.

Medhat wrote about starvation of hives on crystallized honey.  I have a
question about that:  what does that starvation look like?   I know very
well what starvation looks like, and what starvation with honey too far
from the cluster looks like, but not starvation on crystallized honey.  Is
it possible that hives on crystallized honey do not die from typical
starvation of the adult bees, but wither away from the inability to have
dilute feed for brood?

Charlie wrote:

 I don't know anything about Ivy,  but canola is very low ash (particulate)
content and normally grades out as white,  I have been told that it does not
have all the nutrition bees need.  Yup it crystallizes at the drop of a hat,
but its no harder than a candy brick.

What is the nutrition that bees need from honey?  Isn't most of the non
carbohydrate nutrition from pollen?

My own experience:

The goldenrod flow is our biggest honeyflow in Prince Edward Island.
Because of the Maritime effect of being in the Gulf of St Lawrence our fall
is several weeks delayed  from continental areas of Canada, and then in the
spring the warm up is delayed by several weeks from the Gulf being frozen.
The hives have a lot of crystallized honey in them from gathering late
goldenrod and the aster flow after the honey is removed.  It is not usually
a killer, but they are ravenous for water in the spring and will be at
edges of the melting snowpack and once that is gone any yards that are not
close to a water source suffer.  Once the first new nectar is available
crystals will be tossed and litter the bottom board.  So while maybe not
outright killing the bees, crystallization is a problem for them.

By contrast, particulate matter is not an issue I am able to evaluate.
Last year the hives were buried in caves under the now for months and the
walls of the snow caves were covered with beeshit and there was more
beeshit around the entrances and some that couldn't hold it had fouled the
top bars.  But the hives with dysentery did not necessarily have nosema.  I
do not feed any fumagilin  and many hives with dysentery in the winter
recover fine in spring.  Not sure how serious a problem particulates are.
Not enough in my opinion to offset the excellent resistance to
crystallization of buckwheat honey (as good or better than clover).

Stan

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