# Feeding fermented honey to bees?



## fish_stix (May 17, 2009)

Would you eat it yourself? If not, then don't give to your bees. Causes diarrhea.


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## mike haney (Feb 9, 2007)

add 10% water, boil briefly (10 seconds)when cool add "terramiacen (sp?) a cheap antibiotic- put in inner feeder during the "dearth" this summer when the supers are off. good luck,mike


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

mike haney said:


> add 10% water, boil briefly (10 seconds)when cool add "terramiacen (sp?) a cheap antibiotic-


If its fermented, it contains alcohol. Alcohol is poison to bees. I'm not sure how adding water, boiling briefly and adding an antibiotic changes that.

I wouldn't feed it to my bees.


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## schmism (Feb 7, 2009)

beemandan said:


> If its fermented, it contains alcohol. Alcohol is poison to bees. I'm not sure how adding water, boiling briefly and adding an antibiotic changes that.


Well, 1st when you boil/cook any substance with alcohol in it, the alcohol has a very low evaporation point, so you essentially boil it away. 2nd when you boil the honey you kill off those bacteria, thus the whole reason why commercial honey is pasteurized. 



> pas·teur·ize
> /ˈpæstʃəˌraɪz, ˈpæstə-/ Show Spelled[pas-chuh-rahyz, pas-tuh-] Show IPA
> –verb (used with object),-ized, -iz·ing.
> to expose (a food, as milk, cheese, yogurt, beer, or wine) to an elevated temperature for a period of time sufficient to destroy certain microorganisms, as those that can produce disease or cause spoilage or undesirable fermentation of food, without


3rd Antibotic is used to help fight any left over bacteria not killed off in the boiling aka pasteurization. 

The add water part is likely to thin out and or account for water lost when boiling so it makes it easyer to feed back via a standard syrup feeder. 


So in short, Id have no problem following the above instructions in order to feed the honey back to my girls.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

schmism said:


> So in short, Id have no problem following the above instructions in order to feed the honey back to my girls.


So, you figure that boiling water for ten seconds will substantially reduce the alcohol content....as to render it safe for bees to consume. Ok....you and I have different standards.


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## schmism (Feb 7, 2009)

beemandan said:


> So, you figure that boiling water for ten seconds will substantially reduce the alcohol content....as to render it safe for bees to consume. Ok....you and I have different standards.


You do understand that ethanol (the main version of alcohol) has a boiling point of about 78deg C (remember class boiling point of water is 100deg C)

so again yes for the small amount of alcohol that the honey MAY contain, i think it would be fine to feed to my bees after following the directions given.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

schmism said:


> You do understand that ethanol (the main version of alcohol) has a boiling point of about 78deg C (remember class boiling point of water is 100deg C)


 So class.....the boiling point of the mixture (honey, water, alcohol, etc) will be somewhere other than 78 deg C (it isn't pure alcohol) and 100 deg C(it isn't pure water)....and I'd have to ask...so what difference does the temperature at which the mixture boils matter? I mean, 10 seconds to remove enough alcohol to make it safe for bees to consume? How much alcohol will volatilize? How much will remain? Again....I wouldn't feed it to my bees. You would. I reckon it's up to the original poster to decide what to do.


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## Nabber86 (Apr 15, 2009)

You might want to also consider the starting alcohol content of the fermented honey. It probably isnt all that high (1 or 2 percent?). It's not like schmism is feeding fully fermented mead (12++ percent alcohol) to the bees.

Also - Honey is only about 20 percent water (this limits the amount of alcohol that can be produced) and increase the boiling temperature _*much*_ greater that 100 degrees C (or 212 F).


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## mike haney (Feb 9, 2007)

some of the local "brewers" (wink,wink  ) assure me the vapor point of alcohol to be 165 degrees. they are quite certan of this as their aim is to not vaporize any water so the condensed "product" is more pure. water boils at 212 degrees, so any alcohol is long gone when you hit that temp. as dan said everyone must make their own assessment. its never hurt my bees. good luck,mike


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## WoolheaterFarms (Jan 20, 2010)

schmism said:


> You do understand that ethanol (the main version of alcohol) has a boiling point of about 78deg C (remember class boiling point of water is 100deg C)
> 
> so again yes for the small amount of alcohol that the honey MAY contain, i think it would be fine to feed to my bees after following the directions given.


I don't have a better source, but when I was watching Food Detectives on the Food Network my previously held thoughts on cooking with alcohol were similar to yours.

If you can find this episode, watch it.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food-detectives/food-detectives10/index.html

If not, here is a chart for cooking with alcohol.
http://homecooking.about.com/library/archive/blalcohol12.htm

I should note that while I agree alcohol has a lower boiling point and should boil before water, we are talking about complex, homogeneous mixtures which increase the boiling point of all solute, much in the same way that adding salt to water increases the temperature at which it boils. By the time you evaporate the alcohol, you've made the honey even less worthy of being giving to the bees.

Personally, I wouldn't risk it despite understanding the pastuerization process as many spore forming mirco organisms can survive a single boil.


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## mike haney (Feb 9, 2007)

"...Personally, I wouldn't risk it despite understanding the pastuerization process as many spore forming mirco organisms can survive a single boil...." thus the addition of an antibiotic...perhaps i am more cavalier in my concern for the bees because i've done it for a while, or because i dont have only one hive and wont be out of business if they dont make honey, or because i have seen this work in the past. then again, perhaps some just like to split hairs...
good luck,mike


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## schmism (Feb 7, 2009)

beemandan said:


> So class.....the boiling point of the mixture (honey, water, alcohol, etc) will be somewhere other than 78 deg C (it isn't pure alcohol) and 100 deg C(it isn't pure water)....and I'd have to ask...so what difference does the temperature at which the mixture boils matter?


your correct in thinking that the honey neither boils at either of those temps. but boiling honey is actually much hotter than boiling water.

based off of boiling (white crystal cane type) sugar temps will range from over 110C upwards of 175C. The sugar does not act like water, which will NOT get hotter than 100C no matter how much heat you put to the pan. Honey like other sugars will continue to heat up as you apply more heat. 

So to your question, what temp is boiling point of honey? I dont know exactly but what i do know is its north of 100 C. 

What would be great is if riverhawk planned to follow the above advise, to stick a candy thermometer into his honey and give us some solid data as to what temp his honey came to first boil.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

schmism said:


> What would be great is if riverhawk planned to follow the above advise, to stick a candy thermometer into his honey and give us some solid data as to what temp his honey came to first boil.


Or he/she could use a hydrometer, before and after, to estimate how much alcohol was removed. Whatever the results....I still wouldn't give it to my bees.


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## Nabber86 (Apr 15, 2009)

beemandan said:


> Or he/she could use a hydrometer, before and after, to estimate how much alcohol was removed. Whatever the results....I still wouldn't give it to my bees.


An alcohol hydrometer to measure the SG of Honey? The scale on a hydrometer that is used to measure the specific gravity (SG) of a wurt or a must typically goes from 0.990-1.150 and the SG of honey is in the 1.4 to 1.5 range. A couple of things come to mind. 1 - An alcohol hydrometer probably isnt heavy enough to penetrate the surface of honey and, 2 - A honey hydrometer (higher scale hydrometer) wouldnt have the resolution to measure the difference of the alcohol in honey before and after boiling.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Nabber86 said:


> An alcohol hydrometer to measure the SG of Honey?


Ah well...you've got me. I really hadn't considered the real world permutations....my main point was that I wouldn't feed fermented honey to my bees, with or without a 10 second boil.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

mike haney said:


> ...perhaps i am more cavalier in my concern for the bees because i've done it for a while, or because i dont have only one hive and wont be out of business if they dont make honey, or because i have seen this work in the past. then again,


Or...maybe you've just been lucky. 


mike haney said:


> ...
> perhaps some just like to split hairs...


Can't be referring to me.....I don't have enough left to split.


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## mike haney (Feb 9, 2007)

please dont be offended,dan. although i quoted you it was meant to be more of an overall statement about the general tone of some replies. i do agree with you that this has to be an individual judgement call, and i have in fact been lucky all my life , maybe moreso in this case than others. i can only recall doing it twice in my lfetime, and a lot would depend on the degree of contamination in the honey as to how toxic it would be. certainly i have never seen as bad a case as the pictures indicate. my sincere apologies for a poorly worded and composed reply.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

mike haney said:


> please dont be offended,dan.


I enjoyed the opportunity to take a spin on the hair splitting...as I have none left. I truly believe that there is plenty of room for differences of opinion as long as folks remain civil and your posts are perfectly civil....so absolutely no offense taken.


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## mxr618 (Apr 23, 2008)

This went bad in a fast direction.

I was looking for someone to post something about the girls getting tipsy and flying sideways and trying to pollinate the neighbor's plastic flowers.


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## Nabber86 (Apr 15, 2009)

Well back to the point of the original post.....

I feel that the following are reasonable questions to ask. 

Just how toxic is alcohol to bees? 

Can anyone cite a study that provides hard data such as LD-50 for alcohol exposure to bees? 

How much alcohol is present in "fermented" raw honey?

Honeybees have been making honey since forever. One would think that in all that time, many honeybees have been exposed to alcohol (afterall, honey is a sugar solution and sugar solutions tend to ferment). That said, wouldnt honeybees have built up some natural resistence to alcohol?

Also, remember that we are talking about relatively low levels of alcohol in fermented honey -not soaking the bees in a bottle of Everclear.


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## schmism (Feb 7, 2009)

Nabber86 said:


> Can anyone cite a study that provides hard data such as LD-50 for alcohol exposure to bees?


Us firefighters/first responders may know what LD-50 is... but you may have to explain that to most people


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Nabber86 said:


> Can anyone cite a study that provides hard data such as LD-50 for alcohol exposure to bees?


 In my opinion, it would only be significant to know the LD50 if one also knew the alcohol content of the honey. If a beekeeper had a few gallons, it probably wouldn’t be worth the trouble to find out. If they had hundreds of gallons…


Nabber86 said:


> One would think that in all that time, many honeybees have been exposed to alcohol (afterall, honey is a sugar solution and sugar solutions tend to ferment) .


Bees remove sufficient moisture from their honey so that it doesn’t ferment. This really is the point here. Alcohol is poison. So, from an evolutionary standpoint, those bees that could store honey that didn’t ferment…they were the ones who survived.


Nabber86 said:


> Also, remember that we are talking about relatively low levels of alcohol in fermented honey -not soaking the bees in a bottle of Everclear.


 This is the foundation of original disagreement. How much is toxic? mike haney and schmism both believe that their treatment protocol will reduce the alcohol content to a safe level. I am not willing to take the risk. We have an adult difference of opinion…perfectly normal amongst adults. theriverhawk (original poster) can choose which course to take. I don’t think a scientific study is called for.


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## yamahawg (May 19, 2010)

:applause::lpf:


mxr618 said:


> This went bad in a fast direction.
> 
> I was looking for someone to post something about the girls getting tipsy and flying sideways and trying to pollinate the neighbor's plastic flowers.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>>If its fermented, it contains alcohol. Alcohol is poison to bees. I'm not sure how adding water, boiling briefly and adding an antibiotic changes that. 
>Well, 1st when you boil/cook any substance with alcohol in it, the alcohol has a very low evaporation point, so you essentially boil it away.

Of course.

> 2nd when you boil the honey you kill off those bacteria, thus the whole reason why commercial honey is pasteurized. 

Actually, it's not pasteurized. Pasteurization is for disease prevention. Commercial honey is heated to make it flow and to eliminate crystals so it won't crystalize. If it were pasteurized it would destroy the flavor and the color even more than is already being done...

>3rd Antibotic is used to help fight any left over bacteria not killed off in the boiling aka pasteurization. 

Antibiotics will not kill yeast and yeast is the cause of the fermentation.

>So in short, Id have no problem following the above instructions in order to feed the honey back to my girls. 

I'm sure they will store the antibiotics in the "no peeing section of the pool".


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