cityboy
06-03-2005, 03:43 PM
Stevia is an extremely sweet substance. Can stevia and water be successfully substituted for sugar water to feed bees?
artic
06-03-2005, 05:41 PM
Bees are looking for the calories (or carbohydrates or something along those lines)in sugar to keep going. Stevia is an extremely poor source of this, it is sweet but for different reasons. If you did this you would end up with starved bees, similarly to what would happen if you tried to feed them nutrisweet or any other artificial sweetener. It is best to stick to honey, refined cane sugar, refined beet sugar (or even hight fructose corn syrup) for feeding.
Branman
06-03-2005, 05:52 PM
I agree with artic, I think it would be a very bad idea. It provides -nothing- to the bees.
Michael Bush
06-03-2005, 08:25 PM
Bees live on sugar. Stevia is not sugar.