# Honey Bee Healthy residue in honey



## Ma-Honey (Aug 8, 2010)

For the past few years I have been noticing a opalesence in my honey. I use HBH in the Spring and Fall feeding and I am wondering if the oil residues remain in the comb. I remove the sugar water early enough to keep it from the honey flow. Not sure about the winter honey. Most time I extract from dead outs but everything is capped Any thoughts?


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Some plants, purple loosestrife in particular, produce a nectar that has a slightly iridescent quality to it. It looks like the sheen of an oil slick on water to me. I don't know if that could become concentrated enough in your honey. Maybe some other plants do this, as well? (ETA: I think Jap. knotweed may be one of them - I don't know because I remove Jap. knotweed whenever I find it, so I don't think my bees get much.)

Why do you feed HBH? The essential oils in it give me the willies. I even wish my winter patty (Dadant) didn't have any HBH in it as I think EOs are bad for the bees' guts. My bees will take simple syrups very readily w/o any adjuvants or appetite boosters, _as long as the syrup doesn't get cold._ So that makes it just a management issue for me to feed them in amounts that they will consume before it cools off at night. I only feed syrup in the fall, they get sugar bricks or winter patty if they need extra supplies in the late winter/earliest spring period.

Do your super combs smell like HBH? 

I think bees will cap syrup, at times, so that's not always a guarantee it was just nectar in the honey. I have read that some people add food coloring to their syrup so they can detect it visually in honey. I may not have understood this correctly but, do you _only_ harvest from deadouts? Do you have that many deadouts so it's a reliable way to get honey? 

Nancy


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## Buzz-kill (Aug 23, 2017)

Ma-Honey said:


> For the past few years I have been noticing a opalesence in my honey. I use HBH in the Spring and Fall feeding and I am wondering if the oil residues remain in the comb. I remove the sugar water early enough to keep it from the honey flow. Not sure about the winter honey. Most time I extract from dead outs but everything is capped Any thoughts?


If the compounds are lipids they will definitely move into the wax. I don't know because I don't know what is in HBH. Secondly bees move food stores around in the hive so although you think you stop feeding before the flow that doesn't mean they won't move some of it to frames you extract.


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## Ma-Honey (Aug 8, 2010)

I find my bees take down the HBH well and had used it in the past to keep the mold from building up in the Styrofoam feeders I was using. I guess it's a personal choice.
As far as dead outs, I did not lose any hives last year but this year I lost one of 10. I am downstate so purple loosestrife is not that common and jap knot weed is every where. I only have one harvest a year in the late summer, everything else I leave to the bees.( clarifying that I don't take a fall harvest that could contain HBH. Only exception is the dead out. The hive that died had two full boxes of honey.


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## Ma-Honey (Aug 8, 2010)

That makes sense but there are lots of HBH devotees and I'm just wondering why this topic hasn't surfaced. If indeed what I'm seeing is HBH in the honey


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