To produce a completely natural honey, bees have to travel long distances to be able to suck the nectar of flowers and turn it into honey. Most of the amount of nectar that the bee eats and honey is made from, determines the type of honey. For example, if most of a hive and bees feed on acacia nectar, the resulting honey becomes acacia honey. Natural honey has a low sucrose content and therefore is suitable for diabetics and people on special diets; Because it does not have the destructive effects of a honey with artificial sugar.
Therefore, in nutritional honey, water, sugar or other sugary materials are used to feed the bees. Simultaneously with the decrease of necessary flowers and nectar after spring or the end of summer, the beekeeper, if he wants to continue producing honey, feeds the bees and hives artificially. At the same time as winter, the required nectar is no longer available. Some beekeepers feed the bees with sugar and water instead of moving and migrating to tropical areas that have nectar.
Of course, there are beekeepers who give some of the natural honey produced to bees instead of artificial feeding. In such a situation, the honey produced is not natural and will not have healing properties. Simultaneously with the reduction of nectar and nutrition in the hive, the queen bee reduces ovulation, which can balance the population of worker bees with available food sources.
At such times, the beekeeper, by feeding the hives, sends the message to the queen that there is enough food to ovulate and increase the hive population. In addition, the activity of raising infants in the hive, the condition of colony feeding, the quantity and quality of pollen and nectar entering and feeding in the hive will determine whether the bees need complementary foods or not? Of course, it is necessary to mention that not all beekeepers sell the nutritional honey produced, and because they do not lose their bees, they turn to this method in winter.
The best way to distinguish natural honey from nutritional honey is to test honey in a reputable laboratory. In the laboratory, the sucrose content of honey, the ratio of fructose to glucose and proline are tested. The most standard amount and percentage of sucrose in a quality and healthy honey should be up to 5%. Also, the ratio of fructose to glucose should be at least 9.0. Proline is also an amino acid found in plants and therefore in natural honeys made from the nectar of these plants. The minimum allowable proline limit in natural honey should not be less than 089 mg per kg
Sugars and abnormal Sugary nutrition and its solution with water are used as the main and most common bee nutrition. Also, using fondant, pills and sugar legs inside the hive is another method of feeding bees artificially. Soy flour, brewer’s yeast, vitamin C and powdered milk are other artificial bee foods. In summer, in order to reduce the heat of the hives, they also give water to the bees! Of course, in addition to feeding water and sugar, there are beekeepers who use beet molasses syrup, saccharin, glucose syrup, etc
– Natural protein is used to feed bees mainly in winter. This type of protein is obtained by pollinating the net at the entrance to the hive. Protein supplements given to bees are usually divided into two categories:
Of course, none of the food protein supplement that honeybees are, are not perfect and cannot substitute for pollen are normal, because the honey produced from the nectar and pollen valuable natural and has more properties than honey nutrition.
– Economic cost With artificial feeding methods of bees, more honey is produced than a natural method of making honey. In addition, due to the greater hassle of natural bee feeding for beekeepers, some beekeepers prefer to resort to artificial hive feeding methods.
In the method of producing honey for feeding, there is no need for frequent and long-distance movement of bees and does not follow the costs of moving and moving the hives for the beekeeper. For this reason, natural honey is more expensive than nutritional honey because of the higher costs involved in the production process for beekeepers. The result is that in addition to the natural nutrition of bees, there is also an artificial method of feeding them, which produces artificial honey that is artificial and lacks sufficient nutritional value.
Standifer, L. N., Moeller, F. E., Kauffeld, N. M., Herbert, E. W., Jr., and
Shimanuki, H. 1977. SUPPLEMENTALFEEDING OF HONEY BEE COLONIES. https://naldc.nal.usda.gov.
Honey bee nutrition 2015. Mid-atlantic agricultural reaserch and extension consortium . https://canr.udel.edu/maarec/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2010/05/Honey-bee-nutrition-MAAREC-1.pdf
