# "...honey vs. sucrose or high fructose corn syrup"



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

a study recently published in *nature*:

http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140717/srep05726/full/srep05726.html


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## The General (Apr 22, 2014)

People actually feed HFCS to bees as a strategy!?

This stuff wrecks havoc in humans and our digestive systems is much more complex than bees...


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## schmism (Feb 7, 2009)

The General said:


> People actually feed HFCS to bees as a strategy!?


You must be new here.

To summarize the strategy, 100% natural honey may wholesale for ~$3 /lb (i retail only mine for 7 so im guessing at wholesale price) so a ton fetches ~$6000. HFCS is $500-700 per ton. So if your in the honey business, then yes you take all the honey and feed back HFCS to ensure the bees have enough stores for winter. 




> This stuff wrecks havoc in humans and our digestive systems is much more complex than bees...


Do you have a source to cite as to how HFCS "wrecks havoc" with us (residual pesticides aside)? Perhaps a source that indicates that the more complex the digestive system the more prone to "havoc" it is?


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

:shhhhr you could fill an old steel fuel tank with straw and keep adding corn syrup. this is usually stashed in the bushes about 200 feet from the hives to reduce robing and to keep it out of site. that way you can fill your honey supers quicker, why wait for fall. schimism has the numbers about right except on a large scale you might be able to do it cheaper yet. wholesale on the honey is more like 2.35/2.75. you know we have to compete with china.


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## kenargo (May 13, 2014)

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/integrative_medicine_digestive_center/news_events/corn_syrup.html

Quote from the article: "The HFCS bees do not turn on their immune genes (that is they have less ability to fight off infection) and do not turn on the enzymes needed to break down pesticides (and are more likely to be harmed or killed by pesticides that normally would have no or limited effect)"


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

it's almost intuitive that a honey diet would be more healthy than a sugar or corn syrup diet, but this is the first science that i have seen that illustrates a possible mechanism.

in particular, the authors state:

"honey upregulates genes associated with processes ... which are related ... to immune responses to infection"

this suggests that honey is important for the bees' natural immunity to pathogens, including the viruses that are vectored by mites.

a common denominator among successful treatment free operations is avoiding artificial feeds, and the results of this study suggest that may be an important part of the equation.

on the other hand the bee informed survey finds higher losses among beekeepers who 'feed' honey. 

http://beeinformed.org/2014/06/feeding-honeybees-honey-may-increase-mortality/

i think the comments posted to that page do a good job at pointing out the problem with reading too much into that statistic. for example it could be that it was the lost colonies that yielded the extra honey frames fed back to surviving hives.

i get the profitability side of it, and i don't begrudge anyone for feeding their bees or doing anything else with them as they see fit, but fewer losses would potentially add back to the plus side of the balance sheet.

for those utilizing an ipm approach, it looks like a honey diet might be something to consider incorporating.


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

I have been around commercial beekeepers my whole life and have never heard any suspicion as what you spread out like it is a common practice. Sad that you have been taught to hate so freely. I doubt you even know why your stated methodology is ludicrous in its face.


mathesonequip said:


> :shhhhr you could fill an old steel fuel tank with straw and keep adding corn syrup. this is usually stashed in the bushes about 200 feet from the hives to reduce robing and to keep it out of site. that way you can fill your honey supers quicker, why wait for fall. schimism has the numbers about right except on a large scale you might be able to do it cheaper yet. wholesale on the honey is more like 2.35/2.75. you know we have to compete with china.


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## The General (Apr 22, 2014)

schmism said:


> Do you have a source to cite as to how HFCS "wrecks havoc" with us (residual pesticides aside)? Perhaps a source that indicates that the more complex the digestive system the more prone to "havoc" it is?


I understand the strategy fine. It is Capitalistic to use the cheapest solution to maximize profits. That doesn't make it the best or healthiest one. Thank Government sponsored Corn Subsidies for that.

> http://drhyman.com/blog/2011/05/13/5-reasons-high-fructose-corn-syrup-will-kill-you/#close
Article listing the various problems with it.

Key notes include:

-Regular cane sugar (sucrose) is made of two-sugar molecules bound tightly together– glucose and fructose in equal amounts.The enzymes in your digestive tract must break down the sucrose into glucose and fructose, which are then absorbed into the body. HFCS also consists of glucose and fructose, not in a 50-50 ratio, but a 55-45 fructose to glucose ratio in an unbound form. Since there is there is no chemical bond between them, no digestion is required so they are more rapidly absorbed into your blood stream. Fructose goes right to the liver and triggers lipogenesis.

-45% of HFCS samples contained Mercury, attempt to get more samples for further testing were denied. (I wonder why...)

The sources they used.
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15051594
-The most commonly used types of HFCS (HFCS-42 and HFCS-55) are similar in composition to sucrose (table sugar), consisting of roughly equal amounts of fructose and glucose. The primary difference is that these monosaccharides exist free in solution in HFCS, but in disaccharide form in sucrose. (aka the body processes HFCS differently from regular sugar)

> http://www.ehjournal.net/content/8/1/2


As far as the second part of your question. It is just a general way of thinking. The bigger the system, the more it can absorb before it gets to critical levels. I would say that the human digestive system is much bigger than a bees and thus, much more capable of absorbing harmful chemicals until it reaches its breaking point.

If you bothered to read the article presented by the OP you would have saw this study being referenced.

> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20491475?dopt=Abstract&holding=npg
-Fructosyl-fructoses were mainly detected in honeys from bees fed with HFCS, but not from those honeys coming from free-flying bees or bees fed with SS(Sucrose Syrup).

Which relates to the first point that the 2 items are different chemically and are processed differently in the body. Aka the whole point of the topic and the whole point of the post that was made.

HFCS honey is very different than natural made honey and Sugar syrup.


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## The General (Apr 22, 2014)

mathesonequip said:


> you know we have to compete with china.


China is putting out trash that can't even be called honey. It is banned from being imported to the EU. (much like GMO crops and seeds are)

So I really don't see how viewing them as competition would be a good business model.


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

If it weren't for Capitalists many of the people who think Capitalism is a dirty word would be starving to death in a cave in the dark. Do me a favor and don't buy your bees or sandwiches from someone doing that sale for a profit.


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## The General (Apr 22, 2014)

Vance G said:


> If it weren't for Capitalists many of the people who think Capitalism is a dirty word would be starving to death in a cave in the dark. Do me a favor and don't buy your bees or sandwiches from someone doing that sale for a profit.


What are you even talking about here.


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## robb2k (Jul 1, 2014)

schmism said:


> You must be new here.
> 
> To summarize the strategy, 100% natural honey may wholesale for ~$3 /lb (i retail only mine for 7 so im guessing at wholesale price) so a ton fetches ~$6000. HFCS is $500-700 per ton. So if your in the honey business, then yes you take all the honey and feed back HFCS to ensure the bees have enough stores for winter.
> 
> ...


And people complain about losing half their colonies every year......


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

unfortunately some [or a few] commercial type operators feed more than people realize. I do not hate anyone but I am aware of my surroundings. a lot of times these type operations do not do the best in the long run.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

Getting back to the original paper... I left much more honey on last winter than ever before and I had the worst survival ever. I'm not sure that honey is the best for overwintering. I am more inclined to believe that fondant or divert sugar are best. Just my IMO.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

camero7 said:


> Getting back to the original paper... I left much more honey on last winter than ever before and I had the worst survival ever. I'm not sure that honey is the best for overwintering. I am more inclined to believe that fondant or divert sugar are best. Just my IMO.


interesting cam, were you able to determine the cause(s) for your losses? was there much honey left on the survivors by the time reliable field forage (finally) became available this year?


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

China is really no competition. The government has a tarrif on the importation of Chinese honey that equals the wholesale price. That is not to say we do not get Chinese honey through Argentina, and Brazil, but the extra shipping and repacking eats away at their bottom line. 

The practices of commercial beekeepers are based on the bottom line, although all the pompous purest like to point a finger of shame upon them. The reality of it is a significant portion of the expense of research and field studies to help honey bees is offset by the commercial beekeepers, either directly or by government agencies who are concerned about the financial impact upon the nation should bees fail. Basically the hobbyist would be short lived if not for commercial beekeepers.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Squarepeg - if I may be so bold, Good clean honey is the best to overwinter on, but even HFCS beats infected honey for overwintering. Some believe that the lower roughage of the pure sugars(sucrose and HFCS) helps reduce the need to poop during long northern winters. 

Crazy Roland


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## The General (Apr 22, 2014)

>Basically the hobbyist would be short lived if not for commercial beekeepers. 

I disagree. Honey would just return to being a luxury item like it was before the industrialization of it via Langstroth and others.

As for the cost of research being covered by the commercial keepers or the government. The research is semi required when humans are raising organisms outside of their native habitat. Many unknowns are introduced compared to the knowledge learned from studying them in their native habitat. They have the most to gain from the knowledge the studies provide and the most to lose should they lose their bees. Why shouldn't they be expected to cover the costs of it?


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

The General said:


> HFCS honey is very different than natural made honey and Sugar syrup.


Can you show me any of that on grocery store shelves?


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

squarepeg said:


> interesting cam, were you able to determine the cause(s) for your losses? was there much honey left on the survivors by the time reliable field forage (finally) became available this year?


There was a lot of honey on every hive. I extracted much of it and am still using it in my splits. I have some theories and my losses were varied. However, my mite counts were low going into the winter and very little nosema. Some I attribute to small clusters but others were very large clusters. Some of my smallest clusters survived the winter and have done well this year. All my survivors are big hives right now with great honey production. My best survivors were Pol-Line and carni lines.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

sqkcrk said:


> Can you show me any of that on grocery store shelves?


No, but I could show you a jar of honey (10/lb) that I purchased from a reputable health food store...labeled from an organic farm....it was 30% beet sugar.
A local commercial operation (with product on supermarket shelves) tested at 5% beet or corn sugar...the beekeeper said, "that sounds about right".
You can read in the archives a very well respected commercial beekeeper talking about migratory hives in the Maine blueberries..with feeders full of hfcs and honey supers on.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

So am I reading this right. they are saying something that does not trigger the Immune system is a bad thing?

I would like to see the analysis of honey made from nectar compared to honey made from sucrose. My guess is they never made one since they only suspect bees get something from honey that they do not get from syrup. Whatever that something is they have to gear up their immune system for.

Okay I even agree that is probably not right. But there is the very real question of how good is good enough? Is sugar water perfectly adequate for what is needed?
sort of like better is nothing more than additional waste.

Sort of the same argument that non treatment beekeepers make about their bees in comparison to the live treated bees. Even though treatment free methods by their own admission will likely result in total or near total losses. yet they say their bees are better because they are developing their own means of resistance. I would agree, dead bees do not contract many diseases.

Then there are the results. bees that do not have adequate honey to winter on will not fair better in the end than bees that where sustained on sugar water. This is not the same as intentionally take all the honey and only feeding back sugar water. But hey the bees don't stand much of a chance of surviving winter anyway. And that has nothing to do with what they are fed or not fed. Oh wait my bees survive winter just fine. but then I feed them also. In fact my bees seem to start dying when there is not enough food to go around. they start robbing each other. which is not only the leading cause of losses in my apiary so far I think it is the only reason other than swarming. Imagine that. the bees have their own opinion on the whole food issue.

Simply put you cannot take just a single issue and try to make it stand on it's own.

So although you may fundamentally object to feeding as a management method. would you still not feed if it was the only way to get a colony through a dearth conditions where they are guaranteed to be killed due to robbing?


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

Daniel y... I like your practical answer.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Roland said:


> if I may be so bold


when you are crazy you don't have to be bold roland. 

and your point is well taken and like with all things beekeeping we should qualify with 'it depends'.

not getting opportunities for cleansing flights through the winter has got to be much harder on the bees, and the effects may indeed be less with fewer solids present in the feed.

check out the state by state loss rate as reported in the bee informed survey for last year's brutally long and cold winter:

http://beeinformed.org/2014/06/state-by-state-colony-loss-2013-2014/

it's pretty obvious that the folks up north had a relatively more difficult go of it.


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## Bkwoodsbees (Feb 8, 2014)

How about someone with a small garden telling a commercial vegetable farmer how he should be raising his vegetables. ....how about a person with a few hives telling commercial or sideliners or people ....With many hives how they should be taking care of their bees.. I take the so called scientific evidence with a grain of salt. I always listen to the ones on the battle ground for true suggestions on how they do things. I am sure the battleground guys take very good care of their (employees) bees, even if they don't give them gourmet meals and don't tuck them in and don't sing them lullabies every night. If you are profitable I want your advice if you are not I want to here your problems ....If you have solutions to some of our problems I want to here about them....fighting about hgfc or sugar water ......or [email protected]# scientific evidence not so much. ........I did open this thread on my own so I am to blame also...I want to thank all for their advice and solutions ....I think we are all in this for the bees....God bless you all


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Bkwoodsbees said:


> How about someone with a small garden telling a commercial vegetable farmer how he should be raising his vegetables. ....how about a person with a few hives telling commercial or sideliners or people ....With many hives how they should be taking care of their bees.. I take the so called scientific evidence with a grain of salt. I always listen to the ones on the battle ground for true suggestions on how they do things. I am sure the battleground guys take very good care of their (employees) bees, even if they don't give them gourmet meals and don't tuck them in and don't sing them lullabies every night. If you are profitable I want your advice if you are not I want to here your problems


Ok. I am in this business to make a profit and I am not ashamed to say so. We feed lots of HFCS and some liquid sucrose every year and the math is pretty simple, there is approximately a $2.00 per lb. difference between the price of supplemental feed and the wholesale price of honey. I not only wouldn't be doing this if I were unable to get strong hives through the winter, it would be downright foolish. Bees need carbs, some are better than others but all honeys are not created equal. I well remember the struggles of wintering bees in bitter North Dakota and Minnesota winters on rock hard granulated sunflower honey long before varroa......it didn't end well. Yes, bees need palatable carbs in some form, they also need a (preferably) diverse supply of protein and they need to be as free from parasites and infectious diseases as possible. Subtract any of these key components and your hives probably aren't going to make it through the winter. 
One last note about honey adulteration is in order. You can feed responsibly or you can feed indiscrimentally to try to "enhance" your honey crop, the choice is the beekeepers and it's an ethical and conscious decision. Let's not assume that because a few may choose the latter course, that pure unadulterated honey can't be produced by bees that had significant amounts of supplemental feed in the winter and early spring when extracting supers are still in storage. 
I would estimate in the past winter and spring that approximately 2/3rds of our hives carb requirements were met with supplemental feed but virtually none of it was fed in the 6 weeks immediately preceding the honeyflow.


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

Is it just possible that having all those immune system genes turned on full blast indicates and UNHEALTHY hive? The assumption in this Nature paper is more is better in terms of the number of genes turned on. I see no evidence at all that more is better. An equally valid assumption is more is worse. In short, I do not see this paper making any contribution to science at all without a lot more information.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

(deleted, error on my part)


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Richard Cryberg said:


> An equally valid assumption is more is worse. In short, I do not see this paper making any contribution to science at all without a lot more information.


i'll respectfully disagree richard. 

these genes being turned is more appropriately interpreted as immunocompetence, the opposite of which is immunodeficiency...

and the studies that generate more questions and lead the way for further investigation make the best contribution to science.

other than activating genes that likely bolster the immune system, genes were also activated by honey that are associated with neurotransmitter production and resistance to pesticides.


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## The General (Apr 22, 2014)

sqkcrk said:


> Can you show me any of that on grocery store shelves?


One would hope that the honey made after feeding HFCS does not end up on the shelfs as it is feed to replenish what was taken, _Hopefully _not to increase crop size. However, like Jim said, that completely depends on the beekeeper and how his management practices are. And realistically it would be very difficult, borderline improbable, to screen for by the FDA.


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## peterloringborst (Jan 19, 2010)

> Basically the hobbyist would be short lived if not for commercial beekeepers.


Somebody already pointed the error of this statement, but I would add that the majority of the world's beekeepers are small scale. Not only that but so-called commercial beekeeping has only existed for 150 years or so. Commercial beekeeping is important in many ways but it has also done negative things. 

1) lowered the price of honey. When I was a commercial beekeeper in the 1980s, the price for honey was about 35 cents a pound. 

2) spread disease all over the USA. 

Think about the effect of moving half the nation's hives to California, putting them in holding yards, some containing thousands of hives. Sit on top of each other for three or four weeks and then go back to your home state. Or better yet, visit multiple states with bees carrying god knows what pathogens. 

Commercial beekeeping may not last forever, or it may merge into a few giant corporations, but there will always be beekeepers with a few hives. Long live


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## The General (Apr 22, 2014)

Bkwoodsbees said:


> I take the so called scientific evidence with a grain of salt
> .......or [email protected]# scientific evidence not so much.


In your opinion, what is the point of having this profession (scientists and researchers) as we do in the current iteration of civilization if all the results they find are trash that can't be relied upon?


@Daniel, Richard

I know of something else that also turns Immune systems off. HIV/AIDS. And last time I checked, once these things happen in the body, it becomes much more exposed to the possibility that simple infections and pathogens can become fatal as they are allowed to run rampant unmolested.

How is this any different then in bees when their Immune system gets bypassed?


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## peterloringborst (Jan 19, 2010)

We have discussed this briefly over at Bee-L:



> > That info is also a bit in contrast with Dennis report on better survivability on HFCS than honey.
> 
> But the article was about immune response. Not survival. Honey may be healthier for bees on the whole, but they may winter better on more refined food. The buildup of waste products in the bee's body during winter is a major cause of winter mortality. Not an either/or issue.
> 
> PLB


The increased immune response is good, because an immune response to pathogens is a healthy response. The neutral response to sugar is good, because it at least shows that the bees' system does not regard sugar as deleterious, which it isn't. I was just up in Guelph, where they told me they take all the honey off in the fall and barrel feed sugar syrup. They have excellent survival rate. Perhaps feeding some very high quality liquid honey would improve the rate, I don't know. That trial hasn't been done, so far as I know.


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

Like water off a ducks back Mr Lyons. They are blind who will not see.


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## The General (Apr 22, 2014)

Peter,

I believe there are a couple of factors too revolving around temperature. 

-The colder it gets, the harder it is for the bees to extract the honey they have stored compared to Sugar Syrup or HFCS they have stored. Due to the chemical makeup difference between the substances.
-The temperatures in North America and Canada are colder on average than where the bees originated around the Italian Peninsula. (Russian bees seem to have a much better time overcoming this as they have adapted to the brutal cold winters there)
-The bees simply haven't figured out a way to warm natural honey up to be edible during the colder winter months here. Thus having colonies starve with plenty of food to go around.

This would correlate to how some beekeepers have higher survival rates when taking winter precautions to keep the hive warmer.


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## peterloringborst (Jan 19, 2010)

> -The temperatures in North America and Canada are colder on average than where the bees originated around the Italian Peninsula.


Hmm. Not so sure about that. Our bees are a mix of Italian and Carniolan stock, mostly. Both of these are found in the Alps, where winter temperatures are plenty cold. Besides, they have been in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years and part of that period was much colder. 

It's true that the European black bee prevailed in the more northerly portions of Europe, but beekeepers -- especially in Germany and Austria -- replaced it with Carniolans. Beekeepers in the US and Canada switched over to Italians in the 1800s and found they wintered just as well as the European black bees (A. m. m.). 

By the way, it's unclear where honey bees originated, and how long they have been in the various regions in which they are found. There is good evidence to support three theories: origin in Africa, the middle East, or Europe. Nevertheless they have adapted over hundreds of thousands of years to the local climates where they were found.

The situation is radically changed by now, however, as the bees of US, Europe and Canada are mostly a mixture with very few pockets of autochthonous bees. Africa and Asia, on the other hand, have predominantly feral bees, except in highly industrialized regions such as South Africa and China. 

Back to the topic, I am sure that there are types of honey that are every bit as good for wintering as cane sugar syrup, probably better. The problem honeys are ones that granulate hard, and ones with high levels of impurities. Taking the bees south, of course, would be better for the bees and the beekeeper.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

> Hmm. Not so sure about that. Our bees are a mix of Italian and Carniolan stock, mostly. Both of these are found in the Alps, where winter temperatures are plenty cold. Besides, they have been in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years and part of that period was much colder.


True but it seems that bees will acclimatize in about 10 year according to what I have read. I still find that my bees winter better on fondant or sugar patties [especially if the sugar has been inverted with lemon juice or apple cider]


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

"I know of something else that also turns Immune systems off. HIV/AIDS."


If you are claiming that HIV/AIDS turns off transcription to RNA you are simply dead wrong. HIV/AIDS enhances transcription to RNA exactly like almost any other disease. In fact the normal state for any coding gene is to be in the off state, or very nearly the off state, until it is stimulated by some outside influence that triggers transcription. Life would not be possible if this were not true.

As honey enhances production of RNAs for both pathogens and pesticide degradation when compared to sucrose or HFCS it is obvious that honey contains trigger substances from which the bee needs to protect itself. This is probably why all the actual field data shows bees do better on sucrose or HFCS than they do on most honeys.


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## peterloringborst (Jan 19, 2010)

camero7 said:


> True but it seems that bees will acclimatize in about 10 year according to what I have read.


Hi Cam

I am not sure about that. While it is undeniably true that honey bees can and do adapt to local climates, how long this takes is another matter. I think it probably takes hundreds of years, but I haven't seen where anyone has studied it that closely



> Honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) have the ability to adapt to very different environments and climatic conditions. Adaptation of honey bees together with geographical isolation has resulted in numerous races and ecotypes even over relatively small areas.


 --- Journal of Apicultural Research 53(2): 261-268 (2014)

I found a paper discussing the topic in an old issue of Apidologie which was published in French in those days. It had a very brief English summary which raises some interesting points:



> Different geographical breeds of the bee (Apis mellifica L.) have anatomical and physiological characteristics which can be considered to be adaptations to the habitat of their origin. These adaptive characteristics continue to be shown with greater or lesser clarity when colonies of a given breed are transported to a new environment. Little is known however of the adaptive characteristics shown by local varieties of the bee, which are doubtless only accommodations and cannot be used taxonomically.
> 
> It seems then that bees adapt to a certain bioclimatic system, and a change of system perturbs the life of the colony. A change of the queen has the s a m e effect, which leads to the supposition that to a certain extent the queen controls the annual biological cycle of the colony.
> 
> Finally, the importance of the idea of adaptation in the sphere of bee selection is discussed. Too narrow an adaptation to a given habitat could be a disadvantage and could impede diffusion of the selected strain, and yet the loss of adaptation, to a lesser or greater degree, could be an advantage in the sense that the bee would retain a greater plasticity of behaviour.


 --- Louveaux, J., Albisetti, M., Delangue, M., & Theurkauff, M. (1966). Les modalités de l’adaptation des abeilles (Apis mellifica L.) au milieu naturel. Ann. Abeille, 9(4), 323-350.

What they are saying that it might be bad in the long run for honey bees to adapt tightly to a particular microclimate. That would make them vulnerable to climate change and unable to adjust to that or to the demands of a different microclimate if they expanded out of their normal range. The opposite, extreme plasticity, might be more beneficial, and in fact seems to describe the way honey bees actually are. They are able to adjust to actual conditions wherever they are, from Australia to China, although the temperate varieties do poorly in the tropics and vice versa.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

The General said:


> One would hope that the honey made after feeding HFCS does not end up on the shelfs as it is feed to replenish what was taken, _Hopefully _not to increase crop size. However, like Jim said, that completely depends on the beekeeper and how his management practices are. And realistically it would be very difficult, borderline improbable, to screen for by the FDA.


So, let me see if I understand you correctly. If one followed Jim Lyons example and fed hives w/out honey supers on his hives, stopped feeding 6 weeks preceding a nectar flow, you would maintain that honey produced after that was done is adulterated honey, meaning it would have to have a detectable level of HFCS. Is that your assertion?


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

peterloringborst said:


> Somebody already pointed the error of this statement, but I would add that the majority of the world's beekeepers are small scale. Not only that but so-called commercial beekeeping has only existed for 150 years or so. Commercial beekeeping is important in many ways but it has also done negative things.
> 
> 1) lowered the price of honey. When I was a commercial beekeeper in the 1980s, the price for honey was about 35 cents a pound.
> 
> ...


Commercial beekeepers as we know them today. I would assert that even though a colonist of the 1620s in VA was not solely subsisting on his 20 or 40 skeps and the term commercial beekeeper probably was not used when referring to him, he was a commercial beekeeper.

Especially 100 years later when Beeswax was a major product of the Colony of Virginia. But maybe this is semantics and splitting hairs on my part.


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## peterloringborst (Jan 19, 2010)

> though a colonist of the 1620s in VA was not solely subsisting on his 20 or 40 skeps and the term commercial beekeeper probably was not used when referring to him, he was a commercial beekeeper.


Right, selling the product would make him involved in commerce. But what I meant by commercial is owning hundreds or thousands of hives, and make one's entire living from bees. This simply wasn't done before the 1850s. People like Quinby, Coggshall and Harbison were pioneers in the field. The price of honey was high and they became very wealthy. Then the price collapsed because there was simply too much honey around. That's the whole point: modern agricultural shoots itself in the foot. It vastly raises productivity which depresses prices. 

The second point, that commerce in bees spreads disease, no one would dispute. One of the reasons packages were first shipped is that many states would not allow bees on combs to be admitted into their state. Most package customers already had comb, anyway. This was before it was widely recognized that bees had parasites. The assumption was you couldn't get brood disease with broodless packages. Now we know that packages come with all sorts of surprises.

SEE:

_What's in That Package?_ An Evaluation of Quality of Package Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Shipments in the United States. Strange, J. P., Cicciarelli, R. P., & Calderone, N. W. (2008). Journal of economic entomology, 101(3), 668-673.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

I see what you mean.

Isn't Mississippi still that way? No comb allowed? Or is that Alabama? Not Louisiana, unless special exception is made for someone we both know.


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

sqkcrk said:


> So, let me see if I understand you correctly. If one followed Jim Lyons example and fed hives w/out honey supers on his hives, stopped feeding 6 weeks preceding a nectar flow, you would maintain that honey produced after that was done is adulterated honey, meaning it would have to have a detectable level of HFCS. Is that your assertion?


No, the assertion is with those that don't follow Jim's example. I know of one individual on this forum who would be highly suspect in their practices of feeding.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Richard Cryberg said:


> As honey enhances production of RNAs for both pathogens and pesticide degradation when compared to sucrose or HFCS it is obvious that honey contains trigger substances from which the bee needs to protect itself. This is probably why all the actual field data shows bees do better on sucrose or HFCS than they do on most honeys.


i must admit that dr. cryberg has provoked my thinking with this statement. since my background is not in molecular biology i'm not sure what to make of it. i will attempt to correspond with the authors of the paper and hopefully solicit a response.

my guess is that these 'triggers' may serve to keep the immune system 'primed' thereby allowing for increased immunity to pathogens when the need arises.


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

Honey is probably much better for the bees to overwinter on, since they made it and it is not just sugar syrup condensed down. However, I do not hesitate to feed, any more than I would hesitate to feed cattle or chickens or any other livestock. Honey may be better, but if you don't have enough stores on the hive in the fall, you won't have bees in the spring.

I do question the system of removing as much honey as possible and back-feeding with syrup. It may make economic sense for a single year, but if doing so increases hive losses, you aren't gaining much in the long run, and may in fact be losing considerable honey production the following year, depending on how much honey a package can make for your operation in the first year.

I do know a friend of ours wanted to use beekeeping as a retirement income supplement due to his experiences in Canada -- he was in Edmonton, and the local beekeeper would buy packages in the spring and put the hives on alfalfa grown for seed. He then took all the honey and killed off the bees in the fall. Yield was in the range of 200 lbs and up per hive, and it would take at least 150 to overwinter them that far north. Down here in the sunny south this is a very bad idea, they won't make enough in a typical year to pay for the packages at $1.50 a pound wholesale.

I wouldn't condemn backfeeding out of hand, but I'd sure think hard about the long term effects and problems personally before I invested in it. I'm becoming convinced that some of the bee loss problems are management problems, known or unknown, that weaken the bees and make them more likely to be killed off by pests rather than just the pests themselves. 

Peter


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

psfred said:


> Honey is probably much better for the bees to overwinter on, since they made it and it is not just sugar syrup condensed down.
> 
> Peter


So bees don't do the same thing to sugar water to make it honey as they do nectar? I give my bees sugar water when they do not have enough honey. I have seen it stored in cells. At least I am fairly certain it is sugar water they put in those cells. I believe but cannot be certain they have even capped it at times. I am even less certain that what ends up looking like honey actually came from sugar water. By that time it is just a portion of the total mixture of all forage sources.

I have also heard that bees do not store sugar water at all.


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## peterloringborst (Jan 19, 2010)

> Honey is probably much better for the bees to overwinter on, since they made it and it is not just sugar syrup condensed down.
> 
> I have also heard that bees do not store sugar water at all.


I would point out that you say "probably", indicating you haven't compared them. Those who have compared them come to the opposite conclusion, that pure cane sugar is far better for bees to overwinter on. These trials go back well over one hundred years. Honey often contains impurities. 

Many beekeepers, especially in Canada, remove _all_ the honey in fall and feed syrup. Many use barrels to feed entire yards. If this didn't work, their bees would all be dead. Of course it works. Medhat Nasr, provincial apiarist, recommends this because canola honey crystallizes very hard in the combs and bees can't eat it.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Vance G said:


> If it weren't for Capitalists many of the people who think Capitalism is a dirty word would be starving to death in a cave in the dark. Do me a favor and don't buy your bees or sandwiches from someone doing that sale for a profit.


Off subject, and not to cast dispersions on any economic system, but people selling sandwiches and bees for profit are practicing free enterprise. People who invest Capital for a return on their investment are practicing capitalism. They can overlap but they are not at all the same thing.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

not exactly off topic in this discussion ,,david!


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

Bees process sugar syrup exactly as they do honey, but it lacks all the other things found in nectar -- amino acids, essential oils, and whatever enzymes or proteins the plants put in it. As far as honey goes, chemically it looks a great deal like high fructose corn syrup if you look at the sugars only, which is why it's so easy to adulterate it with HFCS. Florida now requires anything labeled "pure honey" to contain pollen, so the origin of the honey can be at least partially determined, I assume primarily because there is no reliable chemical test that works better. 

HFCS is prone to the production of furfurals when heated, and a tanker in the sun in the summer is hot enough. The substances can be quite toxic to bees. Does not happen with dry sugar, but can slowly occur in sucrose syrup -- the free fructose is the culprit. Heated honey can be bad for bees too.

The issue with Canadian honey is due to the fact that many sources of nectar (particularly sunflower and canola) have quite a bit of free glucose in them, and it precipitates out very readily. It's also hard to get back into solution for some reason, so the bees can starve because they can't eat rock hard chunks.

High quality sucrose syrup is fine for bees, and has been used for a very long time quite successfully. Feeding bees is not a bad thing -- especially when the alternative is dead bees -- but it is probably better for them and cheaper not to if they can produce enough on their own. 

The economics of making a living on producing honey is another issue.

Peter


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Daniel Y said:


> So bees don't do the same thing to sugar water to make it honey as they do nectar? I give my bees sugar water when they do not have enough honey. I have seen it stored in cells. At least I am fairly certain it is sugar water they put in those cells. I believe but cannot be certain they have even capped it at times. I am even less certain that what ends up looking like honey actually came from sugar water. By that time it is just a portion of the total mixture of all forage sources.
> 
> I have also heard that bees do not store sugar water at all.


The difference in how a hive reacts to sucrose feeding is starkly different than HFCS. If you are feeding sucrose in the fall you need to start early and be prepared to feed a lot to get them heavy and to get it properly cured. In the spring when the queens are in full gear sucrose seems to just immediately turn into brood as it is much more stimulative. HFCS which takes less "processing" by the bees is much more likely to get stored in the combs. The danger (or the ease if you will) of adulterating honey with HFCS is obvious.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

That is an interesting and useful observation. I don't think I have ever heard that before.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

> I do question the system of removing as much honey as possible and back-feeding with syrup. It may make economic sense for a single year, but if doing so increases hive losses,


not my experience. Just the opposite.


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## Bkwoodsbees (Feb 8, 2014)

The times we live in..just because statements are labeled " scientific evidence" mean they are facts or just someones inflated opinion. Money in the form of funding or even political pressure brings scientific evidence into question. Are some scientist pressured Into questionable findings, I am sure. I am sure not all of them are. Are some published reports agenda driven, I am sure. Some people take extra extra good care of their bees and some do just enough. I believe there is something to learn from both. I am trying to learn as much as I can.. I will be in year two next March, I am supposed to know it all, I am not so sure. I would love to watch someone inspect a hundred hives.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Bkwoodsbees said:


> I would love to watch someone inspect a hundred hives.


Watch me for $50.00. Help me and I'll pay you. Maybe. Any demonstrations I ever put on I got paid.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

I can personally support Jim Lyon's statements about how bees react differently to Sucrose syrup and HFCS.

Most all of the old timers knew that sucrose was better for the bees.

PSfred, with about a 5 to 1 cost ratio on honey to Sucrose, coupled with the long known winter benefits of wintering on a non contaminated feed, a person would have to be crazy not to remove all of the honey and feed for the winter. We run a single deep brood chamber, just to ensure that the feed stays out of the honey, and can prove it with ISCIRA.

Crazy as usual, Roland


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

peterloringborst said:


> Right, selling the product would make him involved in commerce. But what I meant by commercial is owning hundreds or thousands of hives, and make one's entire living from bees. This simply wasn't done before the 1850s. People like Quinby, Coggshall and Harbison were pioneers in the field. The price of honey was high and they became very wealthy. Then the price collapsed because there was simply too much honey around. That's the whole point: modern agricultural shoots itself in the foot. It vastly raises productivity which depresses prices.
> 
> The second point, that commerce in bees spreads disease, no one would dispute. One of the reasons packages were first shipped is that many states would not allow bees on combs to be admitted into their state. Most package customers already had comb, anyway. This was before it was widely recognized that bees had parasites. The assumption was you couldn't get brood disease with broodless packages. Now we know that packages come with all sorts of surprises.
> 
> ...


 Did that not call for the assumption that your definition of commercial is the only or correct one, and not the one I was in reference of. 
The price of honey did not collapse because there was too much honey around. It collapsed because cheaper more consistently available sweeteners appeared on the world market. 

Bees within the United States did not have parasites until the mid 1980 many early bee laws were made to secure the product monopolies held by the cronies of those who made the laws.

Believe you me that no research into bee maladies would ever have come about unless there financial ramifications involves. agencies do not invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into research just to make the bee lovers happy. They do so because the loss of bees would have a devastating economic impact on the nation!


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Roland said:


> I can personally support Jim Lyon's statements about how bees react differently to Sucrose syrup and HFCS.
> 
> Most all of the old timers knew that sucrose was better for the bees.
> 
> ...



Spell it out for me, please. ISCIRA?

Tenbears, don't forget your foulbrood history.


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## robb2k (Jul 1, 2014)

This argument is all too familiar.

Why does man think he can improve on nature?

It's been proven over and over again that we do nothing but screw up the process.

Bees have lived on honey since the dawn of time....


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

The acronym translates as "Internal Standard Isotope Ratio Analysis (ISCIRA)". More on that here:


> Stable carbon isotope ratio analysis of honey: validation of internal standard procedure for worldwide application
> 
> 
> Stable carbon isotope ratio analysis (SCIRA) of honey for undeclared presence of cane or corn sugars has been available for 20 years. Its use with domestic and imported honeys is reviewed. .... .... .... ...
> ...


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

Tenbears said:


> [HIGHLIGHT]Bees within the United States did not have parasites until the mid 1980 [/HIGHLIGHT] many early bee laws were made to secure the product monopolies held by the cronies of those who made the laws.


Hmmm. Not everyone sees it that way. From USDA researcher Katherine Aronstein ....


> Nosema apis has been known to occur in the United States since at least the 1950s, but its presence in bees has been a matter of mixed concern.
> _
> More here: _
> http://www.extension.org/pages/2514...ite-in-time-to-save-bee-colonies#.U80fIONdUy0


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

Rader Sidetrack said:


> Hmmm. Not everyone sees it that way. From USDA researcher Katherine Aronstein ....


Except Nosema apis is a fungus that completes it development cycle in the gut of the honeybee. Not a parasite


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Tenbears said:


> Except Nosema apis is a fungus that completes it development cycle in the gut of the honeybee. Not a parasite



"Parasitism is a non-mutual symbiotic relationship between species, where one species, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host. Traditionally parasite referred primarily to organisms visible to the naked eye, or macroparasites (typically protozoa and helminths). Parasite now includes microparasites, which are typically smaller, such as viruses and bacteria..."

- wikipedia


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## peterloringborst (Jan 19, 2010)

> Bees within the United States did not have parasites until the mid 1980


I think it is quite clear that bees have always had parasites. The first identified was Nosema, but this was probably present long before it was named



> The Ailments of Bees.
> These are not numerous. Dysentery,
> Foul brood of two kinds, Vertigo
> (Tollkrankheit), and Fussgangerei
> ...





> Nosema apis has a very wide geographic distribution. It has already been encountered in Germany by a number of investigators; it has been found in Australia, Switzerland, and England. The writer has found it in samples of bees received from 27 different States in the United States and in two samples of adult bees from Canada.
> 
> DESTRUCTION OF GERMS OF INFECTIOUS BEE DISEASES BY HEATING.
> by G. P. White, M. D., Ph. D
> ...





> Except Nosema apis is a fungus


Yes, well, that is an issue of taxonomy. It was classified as a protozoan, not too long ago. Fact is, it looks like a parasite, acts like a parasite.


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

Tenbears said:


> Except Nosema apis is a fungus that completes it development cycle in the gut of the honeybee. Not a parasite


Did you actually _read _the article by USDA researcher Katherine Aronstein that I linked in my previous post? :s In that article, she says ...



> Among multiple suspects identified so far, bee viruses and a microscopic  [HIGHLIGHT] Nosema parasite [/HIGHLIGHT] have attracted the most attention in the press, and rightly so. Most of these are intracellular [HIGHLIGHT]parasites[/HIGHLIGHT] which are undetectable by visual colony examination. When bees are finally showing sign of the disease, it is for the most part too late to save the colony since most of the bees are infected and dying.
> 
> http://www.extension.org/pages/2514...ite-in-time-to-save-bee-colonies#.U81DneNdUy1




Other references that support Nosema as a parasite:

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/nosema-ceranae-not-your-fathers-nosema/
http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/nosema.html
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2013/130724.htm

Once you have any given web page open, you can search for a term *within *that page by using a keyboard shortcut of Control-F (search tool), i.e. use that tool to search for '"parasite" at those pages.

.


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## peterloringborst (Jan 19, 2010)

Here is an even more complete definition



> 1) an organism that lives in or on another organism (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host's expense.
> 2) a person who habitually relies on or exploits others and gives nothing in return.
> 
> Parasites exist in huge variety, including animals, plants, and microorganisms. They may live as ectoparasites on the surface of the host (e.g., arthropods such as ticks, mites, lice, fleas, and many insects infesting plants) or as endoparasites in the gut or tissues (e.g., many kinds of worm), and cause varying degrees of damage or disease to the host.
> ...


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

robb2k said:


> Why does man think he can improve on nature?
> 
> It's been proven over and over again that we do nothing but screw up the process.
> 
> Bees have lived on honey since the dawn of time....


I am not so certain that bees existed at teh dawn of time. I suspect they came along some time after that. Sorry just has to say that.

I am not sure I know of anyone personally that has ever set out to improve on nature. Certainly man makes mistakes at what they do attempt. But I am not sure that improvment on nature has exaclty been the goal.

I know for me specificaly when ti comes to bee I ahve very litle interest in what nature does or how successfuly it does it. I am not interested in teh resutls nature gets. I am also not interested in improving on it. Not in an overall complete sense. I am interestd in increasing soem specific qualities of natures work. So although I am nto tryig to improve on teh entire Honey Bee. I am trying to improve on it's tendency to make excess honey. And that in fact can be done. has historicaly been done many times over. and will continue to be capable of being done. That is what husbandry and breeding are about. IF what nature accomplished was good enough for our needs. there would be no need to improve on it. 

Then there is the issue of just what is improvment. that my bees are in boxes jstu steps form my back yard is an drastic improvment of where nature keeps them. Is there some detrement to the well being of teh bee? Most likely. I don't care. My concern is convenience adn I am willing to live with the harm to the ebes to get it. Artificially supporting ther growth resutls in increased tendency to swarm. I will take that deal as well. Keeping them as a whole results in bees that are more prone to failing. Obviously we opt for that situation as well. The benefits outweigh the costs. and that fact alone is proof that there is an improvment in specific on nature. We cannot even settle for how trees grow. we have to line them all up in neat little rows each in its exact allocated space and then manage them for maximum production. And it works. nature is random and willy nilly. Not at all acceptable.

We can in fact improve on nature. becasue the way nature does it is nearly utterly inadequate for what it is we want.


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## mrobinson (Jan 20, 2012)

Since parasitism is a very efficient way for some organisms to survive (think about _that_ when you pull a tick off your shoulder!), I presume that parasites have always existed ... even among honeybee colonies, even in the wild. I'm pretty much not ready to be convinced that "insects started preying on honeybees only in very recent times." Instead, I will simply presume that we didn't know it yet. If there are, today, organisms (, fungi, etc...) that are capable of doing it, then I presume that they didn't just recently take lessons in order to learn how. Yes, science knows a lot of things ... but not _that_ much.


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## SallyD (Mar 12, 2011)

schmism said:


> You must be new here.
> 
> To summarize the strategy, 100% natural honey may wholesale for ~$3 /lb (i retail only mine for 7 so im guessing at wholesale price) so a ton fetches ~$6000. HFCS is $500-700 per ton. So if your in the honey business, then yes you take all the honey and feed back HFCS to ensure the bees have enough stores for winter.
> 
> So when they go to extract honey how do they know if they are extracting real honey or capped HFCS?


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

How we the beekeepers know we are not extracting feed instead of honey has been well and fully hashed out recently in another thread.

How do you the consumer know you are not getting adulterated honey? Exactly the same way that you know your hamburger is made out of beef, and your prescriptions are what they are supposed to be, etc - there is a system (imperfect though it may be) of checks, balances, regulations, market incentives for quality reputations, and punishments for cheaters when they get caught. Also, most people (with exceptions of course) want to do the right thing and try to follow reasonable best practices. And last but not least, we can all live in a constant state of angst or have a bit of trust and hope for the best.


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## peterloringborst (Jan 19, 2010)

SallyD said:


> schmism said:
> 
> 
> > So when they go to extract honey how do they know if they are extracting real honey or capped HFCS?
> ...


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## Nabber86 (Apr 15, 2009)

David LaFerney said:


> Off subject, and not to cast dispersions on any economic system, but people selling sandwiches and bees for profit are practicing free enterprise. People who invest Capital for a return on their investment are practicing capitalism. They can overlap but they are not at all the same thing.


People who sell sandwiches and bees for profit invest capital in their businesses. 


Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industry, and the means of production are largely or entirely privately owned and operated for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets and wage labour. In a capitalist economy, the parties to a transaction typically determine the prices at which assets, goods, and services are exchanged.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Richard Cryberg said:


> As honey enhances production of RNAs for both pathogens and pesticide degradation when compared to sucrose or HFCS it is obvious that honey contains trigger substances from which the bee needs to protect itself.





squarepeg said:


> i must admit that dr. cryberg has provoked my thinking with this statement. since my background is not in molecular biology i'm not sure what to make of it. i will attempt to correspond with the authors of the paper and hopefully solicit a response.
> 
> my guess is that these 'triggers' may serve to keep the immune system 'primed' thereby allowing for increased immunity to pathogens when the need arises.


so i corresponded with one of the authors, who very courteously replied, and referred me to citation #22:

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/22/8842.full

in this study specific ingredients of honey (as well as pollen and propolis) were identified as being responsible for genetic up-regulating, and these were definitely not "trigger substances from which the bee needs to protect itself".

i also discovered that in humans certain vitamins (certainly not substances that our bodies need protecting from) are associated with enhancing the immune system and do so by the up-regulation of genes. 

so the more correct interpretation is that this up-regulating is a good thing.

here's an interesting comment from the paper linked in this post:

" That honey up-regulates detoxification genes whereas sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup do not (18) suggests estimates of pesticide toxicity based on assays that used these honey substitutes may need reexamination (e.g., ref. 12). More importantly, the practice of using honey substitutes is widespread in commercial beekeeping operations as a cost-saving measure. This longstanding practice was adopted after laboratory studies demonstrated the acceptability and nutritional equivalence of substitutes (27). These studies, however, were conducted before the introduction of varroa mites in the mid-1980s; since that introduction, the pathogen load of US bees has been substantially increased because of the ability of varroa mites to act as vectors, and pesticide exposures have increased due to the use of in-hive acaricides and nontarget encounters with pesticides in agricultural fields. In view of current knowledge of contemporary levels of honey bee exposure to pesticides (28) and of increased pathogen loads caused by globalization of trade (e.g., ref.7), examining the ability of honey and honey substitutes to regulate expression of detoxification and immunity genes would seem to be a high priority. At minimum, after comprehensive testing and development, p-coumaric acid may find use as an additive to honey substitutes to allow beekeepers to maintain colonies during food shortages without compromising the ability of their bees to defend themselves against the pesticides and pathogens that currently bedevil beekeeping in the United States. "


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

> p-coumaric acid may find use as an additive to honey substitutes 

According to Wikipedia, p-coumaric acid may be found in a variety of foods people eat, and in lignin, and of course in honey.



> _p_-Coumaric acid can be found in a wide variety of edible plants such as peanuts, navy beans, tomatoes, carrots, and garlic. It is found in wine and vinegar.[SUP][2][/SUP] It is also found in barley grain.[SUP][3][/SUP]_p_-Coumaric acid from pollen is a constituent of honey.[SUP][4][/SUP]
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-Coumaric_acid


The vinegar reference is interesting, as some beekeepers add vinegar to sugar syrup.


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

peterloringborst said:


> I think it is quite clear that bees have always had parasites. The first identified was Nosema, but this was probably present long before it was named
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Interesting! By that definition nearly every living thing is a parasite. wolver benefit at the expense of the Elk, people benefit at the expense of everything on earth. even vegetarians benefit at the expense of the tomatoes. What does a parasite look like? a spore, a tick, A flee?
Seems they act like any other creature. 

Fact is during the time when state to state transport of bees, and comb was governed. Nosema was not classified as a parasite. No true (Bee parasites of the time) existed In the states. as viruses and bacteria were not classifies as parasites either. 
Mistletoe is called a parasitic plant but the reality is it does no harm to it's host. Argue semantics all you like. Terminology doe not change the facts.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Tenbears said:


> Mistletoe is called a parasitic plant but the reality is it does no harm to it's host. Argue semantics all you like. Terminology doe not change the facts.


Terminology can be poorly used, wrongly placed. What books is that description written in? Mistletoe is a saprophyte, not a parasite. Leastwise that's what I was taught.


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

squarepeg said:


> so i corresponded with one of the authors, who very courteously replied, and referred me to citation #22:
> 
> http://www.pnas.org/content/110/22/8842.full
> 
> ...


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

sqkcrk said:


> Terminology can be poorly used, wrongly placed. What books is that description written in? Mistletoe is a saprophyte, not a parasite. Leastwise that's what I was taught.


 saprophytes feed on dead decaying matter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistletoe


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Thanks. Now I know better. Is doing harm to the host a required trait of a parasite? Would symbiotic be a better description?


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## peterloringborst (Jan 19, 2010)

> There remains zero evidence that this enhanced RNA production is the slightest indication of improved health or improved disease resistance.


Right. And over one hundred years of empirical evidence that bees survive as well or better on pure cane syrup, particularly in winter. Cane sugar was so crucial to beekeeping that during WWII it was laced with quinine and distributed for bee feed. This rendered it useless by humans who can taste quinine and perfect for bees which can't.


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## peterloringborst (Jan 19, 2010)

Tenbears said:


> Nosema was not classified as a parasite. No true (Bee parasites of the time) existed In the states. as viruses and bacteria were not classifies as parasites either.


Wrong. Bees have always had parasites, whether or not they are identified or classified. Be that as it may, nosema is a parasite.



> Zander (1909) reported his studies on a disease of adult
> bees in which he found small oval bodies in the walls of stomachs
> taken from affected bees. These were in fact the _parasites_ that
> cause the disease. To the germ Zander (1909) gave the name
> ...





> In the ancient Greek world, a _Parasitos_ was a person who received free meals from a rich patron in exchange for amusements and conversations. Unfortunately, the term is not as easy to define in biology. Webster's International Dictionary defines it as “an organism living in or on another living organism, obtaining from it part or all of its organic nutriment, commonly exhibiting some degree of adaptive structural modifications, and causing some real damage to its host.” Obviously, this definition leaves out phenomena such as social parasitism and leaves open problems such as defining real damage. However, it seems almost impossible to give a universal definition, and, since social parasitism is not discussed in this book, we may just as well stick to such vague descriptions.
> 
> In this chapter, an overview over the different parasite groups and their biology is given. The main emphasis is on those associated with social insects. A summary of the known parasites of social insects by taxonomic group is given. The record holder is the honeybee, _Apis mellifera,_ with over seventy recorded parasite species in the database, but also with some 170 studies that are published and registered in Biological Abstracts each year. Another major reason why the European honeybee is so well known is that it is a managed species. Beekeepers often spread diseases by exchanging frames and hive bodies that contain parasites. These are later noticed and thus become known to science.
> 
> Schmid-Hempel, P. (1998). Parasites in social insects. Princeton University Press.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Richard Cryberg said:


> Some of those trace components probably are even cancer causers at high doses.
> 
> There remains zero evidence that this enhanced RNA production is the slightest indication of improved health or improved disease resistance.


it is well know that many healthful substances can become harmful in high concentrations, vitamin a for example, while deficiencies of these substances are associated with disease and mortality. isn't it more likely that the concentrations of those trace components in honey have been balanced by nature to by healthful?



peterloringborst said:


> Right. And over one hundred years of empirical evidence that bees survive as well or better on pure cane syrup, particularly in winter.


true perhaps, but we have seen some significant changes in survival over the most recent twenty years have we not?

anecdotally we have feral and managed colonies surviving mite infestations off treatments. a common denominator is the honey diet. it's not unreasonable to hypothesize that these natural substances are augmenting immunity enough to enhance survivability.


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

peterloringborst said:


> Wrong. Bees have always had parasites, whether or not they are identified or classified. Be that as it may, nosema is a parasite.


OK you win! you know all.


Nosema apis


Scientific classification

Kingdom: Fungi 
Phylum: Microsporidia 
Class: Dihaplophasea 
Order: Dissociodihaplophasida 
Family: Nosematidae 
Genus: Nosema 
Species: N. apis 

Binomial name

Nosema apis


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Richard Cryberg said:


> The author happens to not like my term "trigger" and uses the fancy term up-regulate to mean exactly the same thing. There remains zero evidence that this enhanced RNA production is the slightest indication of improved health or improved disease resistance.


Thank You very much. This is a good case to point out. Be careful about what you think you understand when in truth you really don't understand. I may not know enough to make complete since of that report. But I do know enough to know what I don't know. and to assume that the results are a bad thing is dangerous. Results are results and independent of good or bad. they are just what they are. The same as when i feed my bees they do better. that is a result and conversations that fly in opposition to that fact I suspect.

Another example of following these indicators is Walt Wright and his Nectar Management theories. His ideas are controversial. they may to some even seem crazy. But I saw for myself enough of what he claims before I been knew of his ideas. Before I even knew of him. and that evidence compels me to look further. examine his claims more closely. I have always said that I do not think he has every detail correct. but he is on the correct path. I outright disagree with some of his points and in some cases he seems to contradict himself. But on a point by point basis there are some that I outright reject and some I follow religiously. I find that his methods do not prevent swarming in fact for me they pretty much guarantee it. but I also find they make up one heck of a strong colony and that swarming can still be prevented by other means. As a result I am interested in seeing his basic ideas developed and refined.


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

Note that there is a formatting error in _Daniel Y_'s post above (#85) that makes it appear as though _squarepeg _wrote the quote, when in fact the quote is from _Richard Cryberg_. Here is the corrected quote:



Richard Cryberg said:


> The author happens to not like my term "trigger" and uses the fancy term up-regulate to mean exactly the same thing. There remains zero evidence that this enhanced RNA production is the slightest indication of improved health or improved disease resistance.


(click the blue arrow in the quote box to see the original post/thread)


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Dang! how did I do that. And wasn't even trying. Actually I do have some idea. Sorry Mark, it was not intentional.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

No need to apologize to me, Daniel. I am neither square nor a peg, Richard Cryberg or Rader Sidetracker/Graham, or even a Moderator. Or did you just fart?


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

There I fixted it. Thanks Graham for pointing it out. By the way now that everyone is confused my original post did credit squarepeg for the quote not Mark (sqkcrk). Who I seem determined to credit or accuse whichever the case may be for everything. I just like your name I guess.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Tenbears said:


> OK you win! you know all.
> 
> 
> Nosema apis
> ...


So are you saying fungus is not Parasitic? News to me.


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

Tenbears said:


> OK you win! you know all.
> 
> 
> Nosema apis
> ...


It appears that the source _Tenbears _used for his cut-n-paste [uncredited] reference was Wikipedia, as you can see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosema_apis
(see the table on the upper right side of the page)

The amusing thing is that the very first paragraph of that Wiki entry says nosema is a _*parasite *_... 


> Nosema apis is a microsporidian, a small, [HIGHLIGHT]unicellular parasite [/HIGHLIGHT]recently reclassified as a fungus that mainly affects honey bees. It causes nosemosis, also called nosema, which is the most common and widespread of adult honey bee diseases.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosema_apis


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Daniel Y said:


> Who I seem determined to credit or accuse whichever the case may be for everything. I just like your name I guess.


 Me too. Thanks.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

Have there been any reasonably large scale studies comparing the effects of allowing bees to eat their own honey stores versus feeding with an equivalent amount of cane sugar syrup or HFCS syrup, on the health, population, or survivability of bee colonies?


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

Riverderwent said:


> Have there been any reasonably large scale studies comparing the effects of allowing bees to eat their own honey stores versus feeding with an equivalent amount of cane sugar syrup or HFCS syrup, on the health, population, or survivability of bee colonies?



Sure. Field data shows bees do just as well on sucrose or HFCS as on honey for wintering except in those cases where they do better on sucrose or HFCS. Honey never wins. The best it does is tie. This is exactly what any reasonable person would expect. For summer feed all three are equal.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

schmism said:


> You must be new here.
> 
> To summarize the strategy, 100% natural honey may wholesale for ~$3 /lb (i retail only mine for 7 so im guessing at wholesale price) so a ton fetches ~$6000. HFCS is $500-700 per ton. So if your in the honey business, then yes you take all the honey and feed back HFCS to ensure the bees have enough stores for winter.
> 
> ...


Someone has probably mentioned this by now, but HFCS comes from corn. Most all corn seed is treated with a systemic neonicintinoid pesticide. The pesticide goes through all parts of the plant, the pollen, the leaves, everything. It stands to reason that it would be present in products from the corn. I don't know what sort of concentrations would be present, but I imaging that it is about the same if you only ate a little arsenic every day....


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

Richard Cryberg said:


> Sure. Field data shows bees do just as well on sucrose or HFCS as on honey for wintering except in those cases where they do better on sucrose or HFCS. Honey never wins. The best it does is tie. This is exactly what any reasonable person would expect. For summer feed all three are equal.


I would not necessarily have expected that in light of the study cited in post number 1 of this thread (http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140717/srep05726/full/srep05726.html). If I understand what you are saying, that means I am not a reasonable person. That seems like a gratuitous shot, and, if it is, I don't understand it, but I don't know you your background. I do understand that refined cane sugar is believed to be better, particularly in colder areas, insofar as dysentery is an issue. I would like to look at the results of a relatively controlled study, particularly with respect to the amount of stores. I would expect that if honey is aggressively harvested and the bees are not left with enough to reasonably survive the winter, then bees that are fed would be expected to survive better than those that are not fed. What I am looking for are the results of a reasonably large scale study where the quantity of stores was controlled so that there would be _equivelent_ amounts of honey vs. HFCS vs. refined sugar syrup. Thank you in advance if you can refer me to that study.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

wcnewby said:


> Someone has probably mentioned this by now, but HFCS comes from corn. Most all corn seed is treated with a systemic neonicintinoid pesticide. The pesticide goes through all parts of the plant, the pollen, the leaves, everything. It stands to reason that it would be present in products from the corn. I don't know what sort of concentrations would be present, but I imaging that it is about the same if you only ate a little arsenic every day....


here's the answer:
Anal Bioanal Chem. 2013 Nov;405(28):9251-64. doi: 10.1007/s00216-013-7338-7. Epub 2013 Oct 1.
Simultaneous determination of residues in pollen and high-fructose corn syrup from eight neonicotinoid insecticides by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.Chen M[SUP]1[/SUP], Collins EM, Tao L, Lu C.
Author information 
AbstractThe neonicotinoids have recently been identified as a potential contributing factor to the sudden decline in adult honeybee population, commonly known as colony collapse disorder (CCD). To protect the health of honeybees and other pollinators, a new, simple, and sensitive liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry method was developed and validated for simultaneous determination of eight neonicotinoids, including acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, flonicamid, imidacloprid, nitenpyram, thiacloprid, and thiamethoxam, in pollen and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). In this method, eight neonicotinoids, along with their isotope-labeled internal standards, were extracted from 2 g of pollen or 5 g of HFCS using an optimized quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe extraction procedure. The method limits of detection in pollen and HFCS matrices were 0.03 ng/g for acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, imidacloprid, thiacloprid, and thiamethoxam and ranged between 0.03 and 0.1 ng/g for nitenpyram and flonicamid. The precision and accuracy were well within the acceptable 20% range. Selectivity, linearity, lower limit of quantitation, matrix effect, recovery, and stability in autosampler were also evaluated during validation. This validated method has been used successfully in analyzing a set of pollen and HFCS samples collected for evaluating potential honeybee exposure to neonicotinoids.


PMID:24081565 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]


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## Nabber86 (Apr 15, 2009)

wcnewby said:


> It stands to reason that it would be present in products from the corn.


No. No it doesn't stand to reason.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

wcnewby said:


> Someone has probably mentioned this by now, but HFCS comes from corn. Most all corn seed is treated with a systemic neonicintinoid pesticide. The pesticide goes through all parts of the plant, the pollen, the leaves, everything. It stands to reason that it would be present in products from the corn. I don't know what sort of concentrations would be present, but I imaging that it is about the same if you only ate a little arsenic every day....


It makes a nice story, trouble is, it dosent square with the facts.
http://scientificbeekeeping.com/testing-of-bee-feed-syrups-for-neonicotinoid-residues/


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## Nabber86 (Apr 15, 2009)

camero7 said:


> here's the answer:
> Anal Bioanal Chem. 2013 Nov;405(28):9251-64. doi: 10.1007/s00216-013-7338-7. Epub 2013 Oct 1.
> *Simultaneous determination of residues in pollen and high-fructose corn syrup from eight neonicotinoid insecticides by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.*
> 
> ...



What the paper describes is a laboratory method that has been developed to *test for* eight neonicotinoids in pollen and HFCS samples. It does not mean that neonicotinoids *were found* in any pollen or HFCS samples.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

Richard, I apologize for offending you. I really didn't mean to. I did go back and read your posts. I do follow (as best as I can) what you are saying concerning the effects the contaminants in honey. What I still haven't found is a reasonably large scale controlled study showing the comparitive effects of honey vs. syrup vs. HFCS on survivabity or population where the amount of stores are controlled and equivalent. I am not suggesting that it doesn't exist. In fact, I would have a hard time believing it doesn't. I simply haven't found it. If anyone can refer me to a specific study, I would be grateful. Cheers,


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

I did find this which I found interesting. www.apimondia.com/congresses/2013/B...ine Health Of Honey Bees - Goran Mirjanic.pdf


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

http://phys.org/news/2013-04-high-fructose-corn-syrup-tied-worldwide.html


This talks about the pesticide being in the syrup, but then claims that it isn't the pesticides fault the bees die... the corn syrup weakens their immune system by not providing what real honey provides and they become susceptible to the otherwise safe levels of pesticide. Which IMO, is bull sheite. The nature of a systemic pesticide is what makes them handy against things that eat them. The pesticide is in the fruit... that is why the pests don't eat it. This pesticide is said to have no effect on vertebrates. Bees are not vertebrates. I'm still not convinced that it has no effect. I avoid the stuff, and I would never give it to my bees. 

I realize that there is a lot of murk around the issue. The way that I part it is realizing that systemic pesticides become part of the plant. That is why they work. There is a lot of politics involved because the maker of the stuff doesn't want to be responsible for killing bees. The farmers don't want to be responsible for it either... besides, they need something to keep the bugs off the corn... right? As a result, a corn crop near your beehive is more or less the kiss of death, bees being the electrostatic creatures that they are, attract the pollen... it sticks to them. I don't care what anyone says, this type of poison in their diet can not be good. It's just logic....


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

I didn't see anywhere in that article that any pesticides were found in any syrup....can you either quote the relevant passage or correct your post?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

better to do your homework first then post newby. (hint: spend some time on scientificbeekeeping.com)


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

deknow said:


> I didn't see anywhere in that article that any pesticides were found in any syrup....can you either quote the relevant passage or correct your post?


"(Phys.org) —A team of entomologists from the University of Illinois has found a possible link between the practice of feeding commercial honeybees high-fructose corn syrup and the collapse of honeybee colonies around the world. The team outlines their research and findings in a paper they've had published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-high-fructose-corn-syrup-tied-worldwide.html#jCp


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

squarepeg said:


> better to do your homework first then post newby. (hint: spend some time on scientificbeekeeping.com)


Am I not demonstrating that I have been reading? Doing my homework...


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

Yes. I read the article.

The article talks about bees eating hfcs have a harder time detoxifying pesticides than bees eating honey.

There is nothing about the pesticide exposure coming from the hfcs. The bees are fed hfcs. The bees encounter pesticides in the environment.

There is nothing said or implied about pesticides in the syrup.




wcnewby said:


> "(Phys.org) —A team of entomologists from the University of Illinois has found a possible link between the practice of feeding commercial honeybees high-fructose corn syrup and the collapse of honeybee colonies around the world. The team outlines their research and findings in a paper they've had published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "
> 
> Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-high-fructose-corn-syrup-tied-worldwide.html#jCp


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

deknow said:


> Yes. I read the article.
> 
> The article talks about bees eating hfcs have a harder time detoxifying pesticides than bees eating honey.
> 
> ...


"The researchers aren't suggesting that high-fructose corn syrup is itself toxic to bees, instead, they say their findings indicate that by eating the replacement food instead of honey, the bees are not being exposed to other chemicals that help the bees fight off toxins, such as those found in pesticides. 

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-high-fructose-corn-syrup-tied-worldwide.html#jCp


It is true, they are soft pedaling around saying that the pesticides are in the HFCS. They are saying, in the above paragraph, that the pesticides that bees are exposed to when they eat HFCS wouldn't be a problem if they were eating natural honey. Like I said, there are political elements to this argument... they can confuse a person, that is what is hoped for.... that people will be confused. It really is very simple. They dip the seeds in a systemic pesticide which then spreads through the plant and causes bugs that eat of it to die. If it didn't work that way, they would use something that did. It is bad for business to say that a person's product contains pesticides... especially if you can't prove that these pesticides are a danger to humans, the intended consumer. If a group did do this, they would likely be in legal peril from the people who make HFCS.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

I don't require any sort of study. controlled or otherwise. I work at a research institution. I know very well the value of any research project. they may be many things but they are not some authoritative source of information. not by far. It is not even what a research project is intended to do. It is one small piece of a very large picture. and never intended to be some sort of absolute determination of anything.

What I do rely on is observation and experience. and I know that I see no difference in bees wintering on sugar water and those wintered on Honey. I also know that bees fed sugar water in spring will begin to increase in populations. regardless of weather they have honey or not. In fact those with the least honey build up the best. Those left with only honey hardly build up at all. I suspect his is due to the simulation of a flow effect that sugar water may have. I have never tried to compare to watered down honey. I will not likely be doing so. I am not interested in honey vs sugar enough. My bees do well enough on being fed sugar that i am not interested in methods that might do better. And certainly not methods that cost more by a factor of 12 or more. I do not think it is possible to improve on what I am seeing by 12 fold.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

You are incorrect and you are misleading others.

Read the abstract at the bottom of the page you keep citing. The only pesticide they talk about is coumaphos....an organophosphate (not a neonic and not systemic). Coumaphos has.very limited uses these days ....tick dip for cattle and placed in beehives by beekeepers are the most prevalent uses. It is not used as a seed treatment, and would not work as a seed treatment.

Hfcs is a highly processed product. An older manufacturing method left it sometimes with small amounts of mercury, but no one has ever found pesticides in it. Hfcs is known to be harmful to bees if it is off spec (been hot and has high levels of HMF).

I'm sorry you've missed things, but it is time to take a step back and realize you mistake.

Deknow


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

deknow said:


> Coumaphos has.very limited uses these days ....tick dip for cattle and placed in beehives by beekeepers are the most prevalent uses. It is not used as a seed treatment, and would not work as a seed treatment.


Checkmite is sold by Bee Equipment Supply Companies, but I don't know anyone who uses it to address Varroa mites, do you? I see it mostly promoted as a SHB control. Splitting hairs maybe, but it's a difference. So, you are, to a degree, correct. Apistan is still sold too. So someone must be buying it.

My understand is that Choumaphos is used in agricultural spray applications as an adjuvant. Sorry, no study(ies) to support that claim, just what I have heard.

Apparently, either Choumaphos is persistent in beeswax and easily leaches out of beeswax from comb to pollen or honeybees can find pollen producing plants containing Choumaphos. I say that because a couple years ago the results of the analysis of pollen samples taken from a hive of mine showed Choumaphos and Choumaphos oxon (what Choumaphos breaks down into) and I have not used Choumaphos since late in the 1990s. Fifteen to 18 years maybe.

Dean is correct. Most of the chemicals found in bee hives are ones beekeepers have used to address varroa mites. Whether they used them recently or not or even ever.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Slightly off topic but does anyone know a good lab for beeswax testing?


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

deknow said:


> You are incorrect and you are misleading others.
> 
> Read the abstract at the bottom of the page you keep citing. The only pesticide they talk about is coumaphos....an organophosphate (not a neonic and not systemic). Coumaphos has.very limited uses these days ....tick dip for cattle and placed in beehives by beekeepers are the most prevalent uses. It is not used as a seed treatment, and would not work as a seed treatment.
> 
> ...


I haven't made a mistake. I didn't hear about this from that article, that is just the one I found after a quick search. I haven't missed anything.... except the part of the article that says HFCS is good for bees. Could you post that part up?


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

http://readersupportednews.org/news...ts-link-bee-deaths-to-pesticide-in-corn-syrup

From this article, a quote from Chensheng Lu, a leading researcher.

"We tried to mimic commercial beekeepers' practices. I believe one reason that commercial beekeepers are experiencing the most severe colony collapse disorder is because of the link between high-fructose corn syrup and neonicotinoids,"


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

wcnewby said:


> Someone has probably mentioned this by now, but HFCS comes from corn. Most all corn seed is treated with a systemic neonicintinoid pesticide. The pesticide goes through all parts of the plant, the pollen, the leaves, everything. It stands to reason that it would be present in products from the corn. I don't know what sort of concentrations would be present, but I imaging that it is about the same if you only ate a little arsenic every day....


Dr. Lu??? You better quit :digging: I know of no bee bee research the man has done that has ever passed peer review.
You made the above statement. It's in error. There is no pesticide residue in corn syrup plain and simple. 
I winter thousands of hives each winter primarily on corn syrup and I usually have more bees than I know what to do with each spring. Meeting carbohydrate requirements in my hives are the very least of my problems. If the hives have plenty of honey stored you are probably in pretty good shape though in northern climates a hard granulating honey can be quite difficult for a hive to utililize.
Here are the fundamentals, protect them from the harsh winter conditions and keep them dry. If supplemental feeding is needed, feed early enough so the bees can properly cure and store it, control varroa levels, monitor nosema and make sure the protein requirements are properly met whether it be from natural pollen or supplemental patties and your hives will be booming next spring. The subtleties of whether their carbohydrate requirements are met with honey, HFCS or sucrose will be the least of your problems.


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

There IS one things about HFCS that can cause trouble, and that's furfurals (sp) in the syrup from exposure to high heat. These compounds are brown, and any HFCS that has significant color should not be fed to bees, it's quite toxic.

Properly handled, HFCS is very very similar to the basic sugars in honey, and works just fine for feeding bees. So does can sugar, or invert sugar (which is sucrose treated with acid to break it up into fructose and glucose). 

I doubt there is detectable neonic in corn syrup. 

Peter


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

spot on as usual jim. pesticides of *all* types should be and are a concern to beekeepers. the neonics seem to get singled out by environmental activists and have unfortunately been linked to honeybee maladies even though the science isn't necessarily there to support it.

randy oliver does an excellent job of objectively sorting through what is known and what is not known about this through his series of articles entitled 'colony collapse revisited' and 'what's happening to the bees'. he provides references and a good critique of them. of course it tends to take one several hours to sift through all of that.......


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

jim lyon said:


> Slightly off topic but does anyone know a good lab for beeswax testing?


I believe I have heard that the NHB has a list of Labs that test honey samples. Maybe they have a list of labs that test bees wax. Seems like they aught to be able to do such tests in the same lab. Probably w/ the same equipment.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

Dr lu has never measured nor has he found anyone else that ever measured any amount of anything other than hfcs in hfcs. He does cite one person that claims to have detected unquantifiable levels of imidacloprid in hfcs......that person has never published anything of the sort.

I've tried to be polite and helpful. If you chose to remain ignorant, that is your problem....and expect to be corrected.

You may not know that I am a leading proponent of not using treatments and not artificially feeding bees. What I've posted here is well researched and well documented. Your assumptions and claims are wholly unsupported and will generally be treated as such.

Deknow


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Riverderwent said:


> I did find this which I found interesting. www.apimondia.com/congresses/2013/B...ine Health Of Honey Bees - Goran Mirjanic.pdf


many thanks for the link rdw, it's a new one for me. looking forward to reading it when i have more time to digest. pun intended.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

deknow said:


> You may not know that I am a leading proponent of not using treatments and not artificially feeding bees. What I've posted here is well researched and well documented. Your assumptions and claims are wholly unsupported and will generally be treated as such.


dean is being straight up with you newby. there's a lot of disinformation out there regarding the bees and their so called 'demise' that is being put forth by those with personal and political agendas. randy is also trustworthy and helps those of us not directly involved with the research to make some sense of it all.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

deknow said:


> Dr lu has never measured nor has he found anyone else that ever measured any amount of anything other than hfcs in hfcs. He does cite one person that claims to have detected unquantifiable levels of imidacloprid in hfcs......that person has never published anything of the sort.
> 
> I've tried to be polite and helpful. If you chose to remain ignorant, that is your problem....and expect to be corrected.
> 
> ...


They aren't my assumptions. I am trying to figure out what is the right answer on a subject that seems to have supporters on both sides. Logically, I know that a systemic pesticide goes into the plant, and into what you make with the plant. That is why they use it. Dr. Lu seems to have credentials. You seem to have experience. For some reason you don't agree with his findings. Why would that be? Is Dr. Lu an evil trouble maker just trying to stir the pot? I've put up two articles that don't say there are pesticides in corn syrup, but they suggest the snot out of it. They do say that it is bad to feed bees for other reasons... your experience says otherwise... I'm just curious.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

Much of my thoughts regarding neo-nics come from this video done in japan. They have, what, a thousand more years of beekeeping experience on us. That sounds like credentials and experience. This is an excellent video, but it is nearly an hour long.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

With science what it is around the World, what does 1,000 years have to do w/ anything.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

You should read dr lu ' s study, and look up the references.
I'm happy to help you wade through some of the problems.....not because I say so, but because the problems are documented in the paper itself.

This is not really a matter of he said/he said....but you will have to invest a little time if you want to have an informed opinion. I highly recommend doing so....you will be appalled and educated.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

> Is Dr. Lu an evil trouble maker just trying to stir the pot?


No, his ulterior motive is to prove that neonics are bad for humans. He really has little interest in bees.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

deknow said:


> You should read dr lu ' s study, and look up the references.
> I'm happy to help you wade through some of the problems.....not because I say so, but because the problems are documented in the paper itself.
> 
> This is not really a matter of he said/he said....but you will have to invest a little time if you want to have an informed opinion. I highly recommend doing so....you will be appalled and educated.


You don't have to help me wade through the problems, I am good at that. I don't mind investing time in my education. I've spent, literally, hundreds of hours reading papers and watching videos. I don't have a good active local beekeeping community to draw knowledge from. I will take your recommendation, if you would post a link to the studies that bother you.

On a side note, I like arguing. It is good exercise for your brain. If you can effectively defend what you believe, chances are that you fully understand why you believe it. I will not believe something that I can't understand because I am very capable of understanding and willing to change my mind in the face of evidence. I don't believe that you can learn anything if you enter an argument "knowing" that you are right. If you are unwilling to, temporarily, suspend your beliefs to look at the beliefs of another person how are you going to ever learn anything? I assume that if a person believes something they have a reason. I like to examine the reasons people believe things, and will sometimes ask why. What I look for is a reason based on something other than "that's how grandpa did it." I am truly sorry if people are offended by that.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

squarepeg said:


> a study recently published in *nature*:
> 
> http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140717/srep05726/full/srep05726.html


This seems to say that you shouldn't feed HFCS or Sugar. (and I agree) The Japanese video I posted talks about the acceptable residual pesticides in fruit/plant products. In Japan, the acceptable levels are, on the average, 300 to 500 times higher than in the EU. The troubling thing is that the acceptable levels in the US are 100 to 300 times higher than those in the EU. So, not only is it legal, and OK for there to be pesticides in HFCS, but also in sugar. While these levels may not be toxic to humans they could very well be detrimental to bees. Back in a day, it may have been fine to feed these things to your bees (grandpa did it) the world is a different place now. There are things that weren't around when grandpa did it successfully.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

good morning newby, glad to see you are still hanging in here. 

my opinion is that we should be careful about inferring our own conclusions from studies and be prudent with phrases like 'seems to say'. 

my interest in the results of this paper are in the context of a treatment free/no artificial feeds environment. that honey upregulates genes conducive to immunity and detoxification lends support to the notion that the honey diet (which is a common denominator among successful tf operations) may in part be helpful if it does indeed augment the bee's natural ability to cope with pathogens and pesticides.

on the other hand and as been pointed out by others here bees may fare better overwintering in the northern climes (like yours) with carbohydrate supplements that are free of dissolved solids. the reason is that cleansing flights may not be possible for months at a time and dysentery can become a problem.

so like with many things beekeeping, 'it depends'.

i am not aware of any evidence that pesticide residues in hfcs or sugar have been demonstrated to be detrimental to bees.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

squarepeg said:


> good morning newby, glad to see you are still hanging in here.
> 
> my opinion is that we should be careful about inferring our own conclusions from studies and be prudent with phrases like 'seems to say'.
> 
> ...


I think some of the confusion with this is due to the legal mud factor. It would be interesting to see what scientists would say, outright, if they didn't have to worry about being sued.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

I find when open feeding my hives choose the HFCS before the sucrose. Probably because the fructose is closer to nectar, right? 

I have switched all my supplemental feeding to sucrose because of the degradation concerns, warranted or not, we keep our bees confined for five months and the bees seem to hold on longer sitting on sucrose/honey rather than HFCS/honey. Since I stopped bulking my hives up with HFCS and now feed sucrose, the hives leave the wintering chamber cleaner.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

very interesting ian, five months is a long winter. sounds like you've only one shot at getting everything right for a honey harvest.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

wcnewby said:


> I think some of the confusion with this is due to the legal mud factor. It would be interesting to see what scientists would say, outright, if they didn't have to worry about being sued.


is this also conjecture on your part or do you know of specific examples of scientists being sued for providing such evidence?


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Years ago, when my kids were little we had rabbits. 
Some of the rabbits got sick with a terrible bloody diarrhea. It was really devastating. They suffered a horrible painful death. I figured we has picked up a disease at one of the 4-H shows. I spent weeks disinfected the cages & barn and did what I could, but every morning I would dread going out to the barn and having to snap the neck of a favorite bunny.


I soon found out it was the feed. 

An accidental overdose of a single supplement additive in a certain brand of feed had caused mass deaths in rabbitries all over the state. 
I swore I'd never feed a single source feed again for man or beast-or bug on my place. 

It was a hard lesson for me.
I now have a diversified choice with most of my food-feed home grown, where I have _some_ kind of control.

My hives get much of their own honey & naturally collected feed, but I also supplementally feed a fortified syrup & protein recipes for a better, broader range of nutrition & as _an additional feed source_. It's not the only reason I feed, but it is a small part of it.

If my hives were near any commercial crops, I would be especially diligent about providing secondary sources of feed, other than purely 'natural' sources, due to some of the modern commercial farming practices.

Of course the more feed sources you have, the more likely you will bring in _some_ sort of contaminates. But you will reduce the likelyhood anything will be in high enough doses for negative effects, much less lethal doses.

Those types of feed can be debated of course, as they are being done here. I won't voice my opinion on that. It would only be speculation on my part influenced by my limited experiences. 

Thanks for everyone's input on this thread. Lots of good replies, links and information.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

squarepeg said:


> many thanks for the link rdw, it's a new one for me. looking forward to reading it when i have more time to digest. pun intended.


Square, the study in footnote 20 (http://jinsectscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/13/1/19) in the study that you cited earlier (www.nature.com/srep/2014/140717/srep05726/full/srep05726.html) was interesting to me (you have probably seen it before). In test two of the footnoted study, they compared the effect of sugar syrup vs. HFCS on, among other things, brood and total spring population of adult bees. (As I read it, an average of 10 frames of adult bees with sugar syrup vs. 7.5 frames with HFCS.) I'm still interested in seeing a similar or larger scale study comparing bees overwintered with frames of capped honey vs. either or both sugar syrup or HFCS.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

interesting rdw. sounds like the footnoted study confirms ian's observations.

after reading the study you linked, i did a search for invertase. looks like its use for baking ect. 

anyone using invertase to invert their syrup?


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Riverderwent said:


> Square, the study in footnote 20 in the study that you cited earlier was interesting to me (you have probably seen it before): http://jinsectscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/13/1/19. In test two of the footnoted study, they compared the effect of sugar syrup vs. HFCS on, among other things, brood and total spring population of adult bees. (As I read it, an average of 10 frames of adult bees with sugar syrup vs. 7.5 frames with HFCS.) I'm still interested in seeing a similar or larger scale study comparing bees overwintered with frames of capped honey vs. either or both sugar syrup or HFCS.


Yes, this is pretty well known and understood by experienced beekeepers.The conversion that bees need to make with sucrose gives it a much more stimulative effect than fructose which is similar enough to honey that bees are prone to just store it away. It dosen't mean that fructose is bad for bees just that the different types of feed produce different reactions in bees. If you wish to fatten bees for the winter then HFCS is the feed of choice. If you are seeking to "grow"bees in the spring, then sucrose is the better choice.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

squarepeg said:


> is this also conjecture on your part or do you know of specific examples of scientists being sued for providing such evidence?


The Japanese video I posted talks about the struggle between the bee keepers and the people who make the poison. The bee keepers of Japan had gone through a different dead bee mystery, figured out it was pesticide and worked through it. When CCD started the experienced bee keepers suspected pesticide right away, because of their previous experience. They were fought by farmers and manufacturers of the pesticide, just like we are experiencing now. They work by spreading confusion, just like lawyers.... create reasonable doubt...

No I don't have examples of people being sued, but if you look at the videos and articles about the subject you can see how they dance around the subject of pesticide in the HFCF, or anything else. The articles state that feeding HFCF is bad, and discuss what happens to bees that eat it, but they don't say the poison is in the syrup, it is in the environment and the syrup makes them susceptible to it. This, in spite of the fact that these pesticides should be in the syrup, just from how they work... and yet there is denial, there are excuses about why it can't be tested.... there are not studies that talk about how they are testing and finding nothing, which is telling. It is easy to imaging a lawyer from the HFCF faction calling the institution that pays the scientist and saying something like "we aren't doing anything illegal, and if you say we are doing something bad instead we will sue your butt for slander." It seems reasonable.... Then there was all of the commercials on TV and radio talking about how safe and natural that corn syrup was... "its made from corn you silly paranoid freaks" It all looks like a cover up. But back to the logic.... this is how a systemic works, it goes into the plant and kills bugs that eat it, why do people deny that it is happening?


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

There are a number of beekeepers in my area who follow a long established tradition of *not* wintering on certain honeys. Specifically the honey made from late Asters is supposed to have a high Ash content which winter time bees have a hard time voiding outside the hive due to limited cleansing flight opportunities. I did a bit of research on this a month or so ago and found some mention that dark honeys in the fall can have a high Ash content. (source: USDA as I recall) I found nothing that specifically mentioned Asters - yet I'm inclined to believe there is something to this. I've done nothing to discourage my bees from gathering Aster nectar. I've read nothing that mentioned Goldenrod as having a high Ash content.

Is anyone aware of any (recent preferred) research on this?


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Andrew Dewey said:


> the honey made from late Asters is supposed to have a high Ash content which winter time bees have a hard time voiding outside the hive due to limited cleansing flight opportunities.


There is truth behind that. Not sure with aster but I find that with Buckwheat. Not much of it around anymore, but I will target a field every fall to satisfy my buckwheat honey lovers. That yard always seems to leave the winter shed a bit more messy than the rest.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Andrew Dewey said:


> There are a number of beekeepers in my area who follow a long established tradition of *not* wintering on certain honeys. […] found some mention that dark honeys in the fall can have a high Ash content.


Some of my apiaries produce a clear honey until the beginning of June ( lavaender honey ) and a dark honey from mid- June to early August ( holm oak honey ). Here the technical also told it is best to leave the wintering hives with clear honey because they have a smaller ashes content. I leave the nest as much as possible of lavaender honey .

I feed my bees as little as possible. When I feed do it with syrup of invert sugar. The few times I have feed is not previous to winter but at the end of it and in early spring, when rainy days are extending longer than usual. I do not feed much to avoid premature situations swarming and because for me it is not clear that artificial feeding is a good thing. The climatic conditions in my country often dispense the artificial feeding, and so have conducted my apiaries with few hives lost in the winter due to hunger or nosema. It also seems to me that the Iberian bees wintering with smaller nest and have faster development and I do not feel the need to stimulate 30 or 40 days before the first nectar flow.


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## Mrobisr (Mar 10, 2012)

The General said:


> China is putting out trash that can't even be called honey. It is banned from being imported to the EU. (much like GMO crops and seeds are)
> 
> So I really don't see how viewing them as competition would be a good business model.


I wouldn't get too excited about the EU's ban yet, just saying they have a really bad habit of their so call scientist lying.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/environment/article4286838.ece
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesta...0-new-e-mails-rock-the-global-warming-debate/


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## Stephenpbird (May 22, 2011)

Mrobisr said:


> I wouldn't get too excited about the EU's ban yet, just saying *they *have a really bad habit of their so call scientist *lying*.


Nice to see you think all EU scientist are Lying. 

By writing "so called scientist" you call into question their credentials.:lpf:

Wonderful for American EU relations :gh:


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Mrobisr said:


> I wouldn't get too excited about the EU's ban yet, just saying they have a really bad habit of their so call scientist lying.
> 
> http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/environment/article4286838.ece
> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesta...0-new-e-mails-rock-the-global-warming-debate/


Journalists who write about some scientists are the most free and true people under the sun!
Journalists to report the facts have not any tendency to temper this aspect or that to sell paper ... and here and there to take a rabbit out of the hat to have the attention of the audience:no:.


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