Honeybee Healthy

[jim lyon]

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.

[sqkcrk]

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.

[Roland]

The jury is still out here. Nothing significant to report.

Roland

[Dale Hodges]

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.

[BeeCurious]

The jury is still out here. Nothing significant to report.

Roland

Adee seems to be sold on it:

http://beeculture.com/storycms/index...y&recordID=697

Is he big enough to sway opinion?

[sqkcrk]

Nah, he only has 100,000 cols. I was hoping to hear from a big beekeeper.

[Roland]

Beecurious - I was only speaking for my self when I stated "the jury is still out" . I apologize if I was misleading.

Roland

[Arkansas Beekeeper]

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

[waynesgarden]

Adee seems to be sold on it:

Is he big enough to sway opinion?

Nah, who cares about success? He doesn't have a study. It's Fumigillin for me.


Wayne

[Ishi]

I think he puts the HBH on blue shop towels.

[deknow]

It allows me to store the made up syrup for months without it getting moldy.

might this not be a clue that necessary microbial action (including by molds and fungi) is likely also inhibited?

I also think it helps the bees communicate the nature of the food to their hive mates. The smell to a bee must be pretty strong.

...and one might consider how bees communicate in the hive (largely by smell), and how adding such a strong smell might impact such communication?

deknow

[sqkcrk]

might this not be a clue that necessary microbial action (including by molds and fungi) is likely also inhibited?


...and one might consider how bees communicate in the hive (largely by smell), and how adding such a strong smell might impact such communication?

deknow

Do you suppose that it would stimulate them to forage? Or something else?

[deknow]

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

[Roland]

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

[mudlake]

I use just a small amount of lemongrass oil.I don't mix large amounts of feed. 2 cups of sugar 1 gallon water. I pour as little oil on a spoon as I can. Less than a "drop" and mix in the dry sugar than hot water. Tony

[NeilV]

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

[sqkcrk]

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.

[NeilV]

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

[Kingfisher Apiaries]

Cannot find a good recipe when doing syrup in drums...anybody?
Mike

[Riverratbees]

I've done ribs when about half cooked mixed honey and barbaque sauce 50 50 mix was excellent