Condition and Honey Productivity of Honeybee Colonies Depending on Type of Supplemental Feed for Overwintering

Simple Summary Honeybee colonies are fed by artificial sugar feeds for successful overwintering. There are several kinds of feeds. Traditionally, sucrose from sugar beet or cane is used, with good results. Currently, the inverted sugar syrups containing simple sugars made from starch or sucrose are recommended in spite of being more expensive. The invert syrups are tendentiously considered as a feed which has the potential to improve the condition of a colony before winter, because supposedly the bees are not forced to produce enzymes for the cleaving of sucrose when they are consuming simple sugars. Hence, the objective of this study was to compare the honeybee colonies winterized on stores from invert syrup with those winterized on sucrose as a conventional feed, to find out if the invert syrup has the potential to improve the overwintering of colonies and their following development and production. No beneficial or harmful effects of the invert feed in comparison with the sucrose one were found. We conclude that inverted sugar syrups, with respect to the higher price, are less appropriate for winter supplementation of honeybee colonies in comparison with sucrose feeds. Harvested honey is usually replaced by an alternative sugar to overwinter honeybee colonies. Supplementation of winter stores with beet or cane sucrose is safe for colonies and does not cause winter mortality. Despite this, there are hypotheses that supplementation of inverted sugars has the potential to give better results in overwintering, spring growth, and honey production of the colonies, because bees are consuming already cleaved feed. Therefore, we compared the condition parameters and honey production in 70 colonies at four apiaries overwintered with stores from sucrose or inverted sugars. No statistically significant differences in dependence on the type of the supplemental feed were found. Inverted sugar was more expensive than sucrose for feeding colonies. Economic efficiency, physiological consequences, and other disadvantages of using invert syrups are discussed.

Automated summary

Honeybee colonies are often fed with artificial sugar feeds for successful wintering. In this study, the effects of invert syrup and traditional sucrose as winter supplements were compared. No significant differences were found in the condition and honey production of colonies fed with either supplement. However, invert syrup was more expensive and therefore less economically efficient.