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Honeybee Healthy

30K views 83 replies 38 participants last post by  alpha6 
#1 ·
I was curious as to the cost per ounce to make HBH versus to buy HBH.

And anyone know of whole salersthat carry the oils?
 
#60 ·
Re: also

Well, I was wondering what this stuff was good for and why I should use it. A friend of mine jumped right into it and he ususally doesn't jump into anything, very often, so I was wondering what the real benefits of using it would be. Thanks for the discussion.

It seems like some here think it's the best thing for bees since TM and others think that you shouldn't just use it because others are and others that you shouldn't use it because you don't really know what it does to your bees. Is that about the gist of it?

Who is using it? Any commercial outfits? Only sideliners and smaller outfits?

Why are you using it? Are your bees missing something essential in their diet? Why?

What is it doing for your bees?

When are you applying it?

How and at what consentrations are you applying it?

Where in your hive are you spraying HBH?

Who, what, why, when ,how. That aught to about cover it.
 
#61 ·
Gee Mark is that really all you want to know?:) Actually most commercial outfits I know of are using it to at least some extent, including myself. My personal opinion is that we only really know two things about it for sure one is that it is a stimulant and is highly attractive to bees, the other is that it is pretty danged expensive. For those reasons we have just been using it late winter and early spring together with pollen supplements to try to get queens going a bit earlier for pollination purposes. The one downside to the stuff is that it can encourage robbing and should be fed with care when that is a concern. As far as all the other claims I think that they are largely unproven. I take with a grain of salt statements like: "I fed this to all my bees and now they are really good". I wish more people would just use it on part of their hives and try to do more of a controlled experiment.
 
#62 ·
Yes, that is all. :)

One reason I ask is that some friends of mine have used it every time they super or take off honey, since this past spring. Some of their remarks indicate an idea that HBH is useful as a mite control.

I've asked them questions and they say,"Look it up on the internet. Isn't it on beesource? You're always on beesource. Look it up." So, since I did the Search and this Thread was all that came up under HoneybeeHealthy. So, here I am.
 
#64 ·
I guess it depends on your mind set when you try it. If your looking for failure it will be easy to prove. The only claims HBH makes is that its a feed stimulant. IMO it does that. EO's are doing good things for our bees, a lot of research is proving this is true. I've been beekeeping since '63, I've seen a lot of fads come and go..yeah, I tried a bunch of them.It will delay mold in your syurp for a very long time. IMO HBH is here to stay, the girls like and the girls get what they want.
 
#68 ·
Check yellow pages for compounding pharmacies. probably obtain ingredients for much less or they may compound for you. Much easier to use metric calculations than English

Fluid Volume Measurements
1 fluid ounce=30 ml
4 fluid ounces=125 ml
8 fluid ounces=250 ml
12 fluid ounces=375 ml
16 fluid ounces=500 ml
 
#73 ·
i would suppose it does a number of things. eating a nutritionally deficient diet will certainly "stimulate" humans to "forage". improperly fermented pollen is without a doubt "nutritionally deficient".

deknow
 
#74 ·
I would think that a strong smell might be like a human entering a room and shouting. All other communications might suffer. Has anyone studied if the EO builds up in the wax? What are the degradation products? Don't get me wrong, I have tested it, and I sure like the smell, but in the end, what my nose likes is of little consequence. Or it could be like tiger repellent. If you have no tigers, it is hard to tell how well it works. I am glad that others have found it of great value.

Roland
 
#76 ·
I have used a homemade HBH when feeding. Bees seem to take the syrup faster, and they have not shown any ill effects. The hives that go into winter with strong stores do best, on average. Last year, it was dry and the strongest hives were also the ones that took the most feed and it had homemade HBH in it. (I do agree that it would be best to not feed at all, and that stored honey is the best feed. However, July and August are usually hot and dry here and we don't have much of a fall flow. So I do what I need to do by feeding when needed in the fall.)

Homemade HBH does help keep stored syrup from going moldy. Without it, syrup can ferment and go moldy even in a feeder sometimes.

It also works as a spray when combining frames from different hives, as everybody smells the same until they get through licking each other and by that time they're all acting like perfect ladies.

The most obvious problem using it is that bees outside the hive are also attracted and robbing can be a problem. I usually will reduce entrances when I feed.

I acknowledge that there could be bad unintended consequences from using HBH. But that is true of every action and inaction I have to decide to take or not take as a beekeeper.

DeKnow's posts raise some legitimate concerns/issues IMO. One question I have is about how bees really experience pheremones. Alot of times, people speak of pheremones in terms of smells. I wonder whether that is really true. My personal theory is that the pheremones act directly on the bee's brains. IOW, I have always thought (really, speculated) that the pheremones are more like snorting cocaine than smelling an apple pie in the oven.

Anybody have any ideas on that?

Neil
 
#77 ·
DeKnow's posts raise some legitimate concerns/issues IMO. One question I have is about how bees really experience pheremones. Alot of times, people speak of pheremones in terms of smells. I wonder whether that is really true. My personal theory is that the pheremones act directly on the bee's brains. IOW, I have always thought (really, speculated) that the pheremones are more like snorting cocaine than smelling an apple pie in the oven.

Anybody have any ideas on that?

Neil
Well Neil,
Pheromones are chemical messangers that stimulate an insect to do something or not do something. Such as the queen pheromone that suppresses the workers ability to lay eggs.

Whether the bees actually smell, like you and I do, I don't know. But the message contained in the odor does do it's trick. And yes, they do act on the bees brain. But it isn't a very big brain and I believe that if I remember my anatomy correctly there is more than one group of ganglea. It isn't all in their head, like ours seems to be.
 
#78 ·
But does "smell" in the human sense, really have any role or is smell just the result of the nature of the chemicals that are pheremones.

After I did that post, I remembered something that is interesting to me. Lemongrass oil actually contains about three chemicals that are exactly the same as the pheremone/active components of the Nasanov pheremone. Given that adding HBH to a hive is literally adding pheremones to a hive, that would tend to support DeKnows concerns. However, I still fail to see any adverse effects.

Neil
 
#82 ·
I think I've finally perfected the recipe for making a quart of home-made "feeding stimulant" concentrate that you spoon out at the rate of 1 tsp per quart of syrup and you can pro-rate that dose for a drum. It mixes well and you can make up any size or quantity. It costs about 1/3 the price of commercially available stimulants, honey-b-healthy is but one of several. The cost of the lemongrass oil and the spearmint oil are still the major expenses. I need to post this when I get time.

Grant
Jackson, MO
 
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