# Why buy syrup instead of bulk sugar?



## Aristotle (Jul 9, 2021)

Context: Canada
I understand that one may save time buying syrup but it's 10 time or more expensive than buying bulk sugar and then making your own syrup. Can someone enlighten me?


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Is it actually 10 times as expensive? My son and a fellow beekeeper bought some totes of syrup a few years ago and I thought the price for the actual sugar content was only about double. With them the time savings and convenience at that time made it seem like a good proposition.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Some people, myself included , believe the bees react differently to Sucrose compare3d to HFCS. It depends on if you want to stimulate or bulk up.

Crazy Roland


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## JB33 (Jul 27, 2021)

Where I am, the price is very close if not cheaper when you calculate the actual sugar content. I pay $.49 for a lb of sugar content in the form of pro sweet. Depending on where I get my granulated sugar, its between $.48 and $.60 /lb. So in my case not only is it cheaper, but its easier. No mixing, no spoilage if left undiluted. I know Mann Lake offers Pro-Sweet at most if not all of their branch locations. Dadant might as well. They'll also deliver by tanker if you order enough.


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## LarryBud (Jul 19, 2020)

I just don't need any unnecessary work and just don't see the value of making syrup-time is money. It's one thing if you're mixing 5 or 10 gallons but 50?-100? As Joebee33 says No mixing, No spoilage and I like the ride through the mountains up to Mann Lake


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

You mention in Canada, not sure if it east or west. I dunno about east, but here in the west it's hard to source HFCS. Sourcing syrup from cane or beet sugar production is easy, but, you have to be talking tankerloads for the most part. The Rogers refinery in Vancouver is a good example, you cant buy cane syrup from them in small lots, ie totes, but if you want a tanker truck full, it's much cheaper than granulated sugar. My understanding is the plant out in Tabor is the same, except they start with beets rather than cane. In both cases, it's not HFCS, it's sucrose syrup.


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## blain1976 (Jun 8, 2019)

Feeding Bees Sucrose Syrup vs HFCS

An argument in favor of Sucrose instead of HFCS....

Some of you might find this interesting or even useful. Maybe even useless. Anyway, thought I would share in case someone was interested.


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## JustBees (Sep 7, 2021)

Bob Binnie just did a video with a biologist and HFCS has shown to have down sides for bee health.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

JustBees said:


> Bob Binnie just did a video with a biologist and HFCS has shown to have down sides for bee health.


such as?

GG


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

JustBees said:


> Bob Binnie just did a video with a biologist and HFCS has shown to have down sides for bee health.


From the POV of someone who does biomedical research for a living, including advising in projects looking at bee (and other insect) immunity, I wasn't very impressed by the data or experimental design. Firstly, HFCS refers to a range of products with anywhere from 42 to 55% fructose with the remainder being glucose. This is similar to what bees would get from consuming table sugar (sucrose, which gets broken down into a 50:50 mix of glucose & fructose by invertase in the bee gut), or from bona-fide nectar. So already its hard to believe that any meaningful differences would be seen, so long as you're comparing HFCS of a similar purity to the other sugars you're using for comparisons. Every result in his presentation may simply reflect using a poor quality HFCS versus high-quality or even lab-grade sugars for the other sugars. This isn't just supposition - he confirms this at the 8:10 timepoint, where he finds that making up a mixture of sugars that have the same sugar composition as the HFCS don't have the same effect.

In other words, they used low-grade HFCS and unsurprisingly saw some (arguably) negative effects...although whether they are negative or just incompetent experimental design is debatable.

His test-tube experiments of H2O2 production in different sugar mixes was bad. And by "bad", I mean "we fail undergrad students for making those kinds of mistakes" bad. The differences between HSFC and sucrose + invertase (the most relevant comparison if comparing feeding approaches, or comparing feeding to "nature") are minimal and unlikely to be statistically significant, which completely undermines his entire argument. He did add in the pure-glucose group, and boy-o-boy that sure makes the HSFC's look bad. But he kept the total amount of sugar constant, meaning that there is twice as much glucose in the glucose-only group....when measuring the activity of an enzyme which reacts with glucose...which will increase the enzymatic rate between 2 and 4 times. I.E. that is a mistake that I would cause you to fail freshman biochemistry. To measure enzymatic rates (i.e. how well an enzyme works) you need to hold reactant concentrations constant. Basically, he's set up an experiment that shows the effect of glucose concentration on enzymatic rates, rather than an experiment that actually measures the activity of the enzyme.

In the final experiments they look at H2O2 production in honey following feeding during a dirth...with an absence of controls or mechanisms to ensure they are sampling recently deposited honey, and no stats - with huge spreads in the data that may mean the "changes" observed may not be significant.

And ultimately, given why we feed, a slight decrease in peroxide levels in what is generally "honey" consumed fairly quickly after being made, small decreases in one of the several preservative mechanisms is unlikely to be too big of a deal.

So long story short, they used a low-grade product that was likely contaminated with something, observed fairly small effects on one relatively minor preservative element of honey (without stats, so many of those may have been no effect, rather than a small effect), and made some pretty fundamental errors in the design of their experiments.

Colour me unimpressed. I think the only thing you can really take from this presentation is that you shouldn't use low-grade products for feeding bees...which we already know not to do.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

@SuiGeneris 
well laid out counter.

I also was interested in how "less H2O2" is somehow better than starving.
Normally we feed to get to winter weight so , no matter what is used One could debate if feeding is as good as honey.
for many "close enough"

GG


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

After reading SuiGeneris' contribution, I am reminded how much I miss those of the good Dr. Cryberg.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I have seen references, though not recently, to problems with long term storage at high ambient temperatures jacking up HMF levels. I did not read _this_ report but Binnie appears to be pretty astute in anything I have listened to. There might be more to the story.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Crofter - from memory you are right - it is a temperature issue. 

Sui____ - What is the reaction temperate during production of HFCS? If it is markedly different than the body temperature of a bee, we may have an issue.

Crazy Roland


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## William Bagwell (Sep 4, 2019)

clyderoad said:


> After reading SuiGeneris' contribution, I am reminded how much I miss those of the good Dr. Cryberg.


He is still active on Bee-L. Agreed, long gone here when I signed up, it did not take long to figure out he was one to pay attention to. (Though I do not allways understand eveything)


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

Without referencing any specific situation, or any specific member, or any specific former member, the lesson here is that regardless of whether one is posting in the 'public' part of the Beesource forum, or communicating with another member via PMs/Conversations, one must *always* understand that the "rules" are the _same_.

If you can't make a 'civil' public post, then don't post at all.
If you can't make a 'civil' PM/Conversation post, then don't post at all.

That applies even if you are convinced the other person is a moron/the devil incarnate/agent provocateur/whatever.

PMs/Conversations are only private as long as *both* parties keep them private. All it takes is for a recipient of abusive PM(s) to forward a PM to a moderator and then all bets are off.


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

crofter said:


> I have seen references, though not recently, to problems with long term storage at high ambient temperatures jacking up HMF levels. I did not read _this_ report but Binnie appears to be pretty astute in anything I have listened to. There might be more to the story.


That isn't quite correct. Fructose spontaneously forms HMF as it ages, even when stored cold (refrigeration temperatures), but its rate of production does increase pretty dramatically above 25C (for reference, a beehive is around 35C). Acidity also promotes its formation. So fructose-containing feed shouldn't be stored for too long (generally, under a year) and should be stored cool if possible.

That said, I doubt that is the issue here as I found no papers claiming HMF affects glucose oxidase activity (the enzyme that makes H2O2 in honey). Lower grades of HFCS can have all sorts of corn-derived contaminants (pectins, cellulose fragments, etc) which may be the culprit.



Roland said:


> Sui____ - What is the reaction temperate during production of HFCS? If it is markedly different than the body temperature of a bee, we may have an issue.


Not too warm, as it is based on microbrial enzymes and therefore must be conducted at temperatures compatible with those microbes, so its unlikely to be over 42C and more likely is between 20C and 37C. Some companies use proprietary products (finding better industrial enzymes is a huge business, and once found, they tend to be closely guarded secrets - In a former life I used to bioprospect for this kind of stuff). Good producers test for HMF and provide that information on their product levels. Of course, as soon as it leaves the factory all bets are off - you'd get quite a bit of HMF after a day or two of a tanker truck driving through a hot Texas summer. Although, as I said above, I doubt HMF is the issue in this study.

Bryan


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

I stand corrected.

How about sugars other than Glucose and Fructose in HFCS?

Crazy Roland


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## jtgoral (Mar 24, 2018)

Aristotle said:


> Context: Canada
> I understand that one may save time buying syrup but it's 10 time or more expensive than buying bulk sugar and then making your own syrup. Can someone enlighten me?


I can not enlighten you. Walmart is 5 minutes away and has great price for beet sugar. 10lb of sugar + 1 cup of water makes great sugar brick and bees like it as of yesterday..


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

Roland said:


> I stand corrected.
> 
> How about sugars other than Glucose and Fructose in HFCS?
> 
> Crazy Roland


HFCS is essentially only glucose and fructose. The way that it is made is that two enzymes are added. The first, amylase, breaks down the starch into glucose. The second, an isomerase, converts a portion of the glucose to fructose (cheaper products may have short fragments of starch (dextrins) in addition to the glucose + dextrose). Most HFCS are made for food preparation - the rational for this is that fructose is much sweeter in taste than glucose (twice as sweet) or table sugar (sucrose, ~75% more sweet), allowing manufacture's to use less sugar in their product, which is both cheaper and lowers the overall calorie count.

All that said, cheaper products could have any range of things in them.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Do the bees use amylase? 
Do the bees use isomerase?
Does all of the feed stock starch get converted to glucose? If not, how are these sacarides not normally found in nectar handled by the bees?

We used to use HFCS, but noticed different reactions from the bees to different lots Beet sugar seems more consistent.

Crazy Roland


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

Roland said:


> Do the bees use amylase?
> Do the bees use isomerase?
> Does all of the feed stock starch get converted to glucose? If not, how are these sacarides not normally found in nectar handled by the bees?
> 
> ...


Bees have both an amylase and multiple isomerases in their guts. They also secrete an diastase (an amylase) and invertase (also an amylase) into honey. The former breaks down any starch or dextrin-like molecules into simple sugar, the later specifically breaks down sucrose into one molecule of fructose and one molecule of glucose. There are also other sugars present in nectar (including free fructose and free glucose), so the final sugar mix in honey is ~40% fructose, ~35% glucose, and the remainder other sugars like maltose. Most HFCS are 42-55% fructose and the remainder glucose, making them essentially the same as table sugar to bees (after the table sugar has been inverted by the bees invertase, that is).

Bryan


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Thank you.

Crazy Roland


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