Researchers find high-fructose corn syrup may be tied to worldwide collapse of b

[bwallace23350]

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


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

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

BWallace: thank you for providing a gold mine of information.  PNAS is a highly rated scientific journal.  One can most assuredly rely on the info publish.

If I interpret data correctly, any artificial food, non honey that is, may inhibit the bees immune system, not just High Frutose corn syrup, HFCS, by denying natural vitamins in honey.  Vitamin is not the word the author uses, I used only in a general sense in lieu of the natural antioxidants found in honey.  The sugar or HFCS is not harmful, it just that the sugars do not contain the natural vitamins of honey, stated a different way.

Great post, Wallace, very useful, thank you again.

[bwallace23350]

Thanks. This makes me feel better about my laziness and me probably not harvesting any honey this fall. Last time I looked they had near a full super. We were in a dearth then though so they have eaten some of it. Now with the fall flow they should be good for the winter I believe.

[Michael Bush]

It's all about the microbes:
www.apimondia.com/congresses/2013/Biology/Plenary-Session/Impact Of Different Feed On Intestine Health Of Honey Bees - Goran Mirjanic.pdf

[little john]

Thanks for posting that paper - appreciated - but I for one don't buy-in to their conclusions.

Here's just one 'dodgy' claim:

... 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).

27. Barker RJ, Lehner Y (1978) Laboratory comparison of high fructose corn syrup, grape syrup, honey, and sucrose syrup as maintenance food for caged honey bees. Apidologie (Celle) 9:111?116

So - honey substitutes only started to be used after 1978 ?  Perhaps the authors should have consulted the ABJ and similar sources, from which they would have learned that sugar syrups have been given to bees as honey substitutes for well over 150 years.  Whereas Colony Collapse Disorder is a fairly recent phenomenon, and is (sticking my neck out here ...) confined to certain areas of the United States only.  It is not a worldwide phenomenon, as is so often claimed - unless of course anyone here has seen firm evidence to the contrary.
'best
LJ

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Sir Lil John, hey buddy.  I have read both research papers referenced by Wallace and M. Bush (MB).  Both articles are outstanding.  The article by MB concludes honey and a high frutose corn syrup (NOT CORN SYRUP) maintain a healthy bee gut.  Adding malt, corn syrup and other impurities cause harm to the bee gut as can easily be seen in the photographs of the bee intestine layer.  MB concludes "it's all about the microbes" which makes perfect sense to me.  The author did not conclude 1978 as genesis of synthetic feeding of bees, just referenced that date of publication of a particular article as 1978. Sir Lil John is correct that bees have been feed prior to 1978.

Paper submitted by Wallace concludes feeding high Frotose corn syrup (HFCS) although not harmful in any way deprives bees from feeding on honey with contains immune activators, vitamins.   Thus HFCS can limit a bees immune system due to a bee not receiving the vitamins that are naturally contained in honey.

SO: eat honey it's good for the microbes and the queens.
Blessings

[little john]

Hi Van.  Greetings.

I'll try this again, but this time using a completely different tack ...

Nectar can be extremely rich in it's constituents, and along with Water and the commonly known Sugars can also be found Inorganic Ions, Amino Acids, Non-Protein Amino Acids, Proteins, Lipids, Organic Acids and even Phenolics, Alkaloids and Terpenoids.  Now that's a very rich tapestry of compounds when compared with near-enough pure Sucrose sugar-syrup, and it's hardly surprising then, that when faced with a choice of nectar 'straight from the field' or a jar of sugar-syrup, the bees will invariably choose the former.  Indeed, I think the above list demonstrates a good-enough reason to always leave the bees at least some honey for nutritional purposes.

But, as the researchers pointed out, "These inducers are primarily found not in nectar but in pollen in the case of p-coumaric acid (a monomer of sporopollenin, the principal constituent of pollen cell walls) and propolis, a resinous material gathered and processed by bees to line wax cells."

Now although during nectar foraging some pollen is invariably carried back to the hive attached to body hairs, the nectar itself is regurgitated and passed to the next bee by mouth-to-mouth contact, and does not come into more than accidental contact with any hair-laden pollen. But 'somehow' these inducers are finding their way - either by accident or by deliberate action - into the honey during some stage of subsequent nectar processing.  With regard to propolis, it could be adsorbed into honey from the cell walls, or even be introduced deliberately.

Exactly how this happens need not necessarily concern us, for as sugar-syrup is processed in exactly the same way(#1) as nectar, whatever the mechanism happens to be, it will apply equally well to subsequent sugar-syrup processing, and thus the processed sugar-syrup will (or at least should) then contain exactly the same inducers, and in exactly the same concentrations, as are to be found within honey.

However - because this was a classic single-variable scientific experiment, an unaffected control substance was selected for the purposes of comparison (plain bee candy: powdered granulated sucrose mixed with 2:1 sucrose syrup) - but by doing this the experiment was then taken away from real-world events, such that 'apples were then being compared with oranges'.

If, however, a more realistic comparison had been made by comparing processed nectar with equally processed sugar-syrup(#2), then the results might have been very different, and may have shown that processed sugar-syrup also contains the same desired inducers, and that the basic hypothesis upon which the experiment was conducted could not then be supported.

LJ

(#1) this is an assumption of course, but I think a fairly safe one to make.
(#2) rendering this no longer a single-variable experiment - but, I think - a far more useful one.

[Eric Bosworth]

My father questions why I collect almost no honey. My answer is I am trying to increase my colony count. I also feed very little. I think there might be some merit to both the study and Little John. I think timing of feeding could account for the difference. If the bees are bringing in nectar/ visiting flowers while being fed sugar then it could validate LJ. However if there is only HFCS then the study has could have merit. I try not to feed my bees. It is to much work. I do have a colony that will need some food before winter. Our flow is about done now.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

[KeyLargoBees]

Thumbs up LJ....as good as both of those articles are they are looking at the interactions in a laboratory environment and not in the more "messy" real world environment of the hive.

I know my case is a little different beekeeping in the subtropics so I am not going to expound on fall feeding and overwintering.

In my case the lil ladies are harvesting year round and the only time i ever feed is on abscond swarms in the fall/winter and cutouts where I don't save honeycomb :-)

[Michael Bush]

HFCS did not come into common use in the US until about the 80s or so.

[little john]

I'm still trying to source some assay data on bee-processed sugar syrup vs. processed nectar - without success so far.  Found a couple of papers related to changes in their sugar content, but that's all.

What I did come across in the process was this:
https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/5-things-that-probably-arent-killing-honeybees-and-1-thing-that

Hardly in the same league as a scientific journal, but intelligently written, and from the same period (2013) as the OP's paper.
LJ

[BeeMaster2]

Good article but I suspect it may bee that the bees are up and leaving the hives due to Africanized genetics. That is what bees in Africa have to do when the dry season comes, they follow the rain.
Jim

[Michael Bush]

Here is a study that compares different sugary solutions and the microbes that live in them:

"Saturated sugar beet juice and floral nectar are used as case studies to explore the differences between the microbial ecologies of low and higher-water activity habitats, respectively. Whereas nectar is a paradigm of an open, dynamic and biodiverse habitat, thick juice is a relatively stable, species-poor habitat. A number of high-sugar habitats contain chaotropic solutes (e.g. ethyl acetate, phenols, ethanol, fructose, and glycerol) and hydrophobic stressors (e.g. ethyl octanoate, hexane, octanol, and isoamyl acetate), all of which can induce chaotropicity-mediated stresses that inhibit or prevent multiplication of microbes. Additionally, temperature, pH, nutrition, microbial dispersion, and habitat history can determine or constrain the microbiology of high-sugar habitats. Findings are discussed in relation to a number of unanswered scientific questions." https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Hallsworth/publication/263887657_Microbiology_of_sugar-rich_environments_Diversity_ecology_and_system_constraints/links/542efc020cf27e39fa994d76.pdf?origin=publication_list

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

I'm probably over simplifying, in short: the thicker the solution the better.  Thick solutions don't promote bacteria growth as well as thin solutions.  Chaotropic, had to look up that one, chao derived from chaos, that is "no order."  Bacteria need 18% or higher moisture for good growth.  Good article MB, a little bit over my head, but I think I got the idea.  Thanks.
Blessings