Maple syrup is no good for bees --that's why they are called honey bees and not called maple bees. lol
Bee collect nectar. It's what they do. It's what they live on. Feeding is only a temporary starvation issue. Plain table ugar is your best bet for this as maple syrup or any other sweet thing has too many solids and is not good for bees.
"Also don’t feed your bees brown sugar, raw sugar, molasses, or maple syrup, chocolate, or any other – “it seemed like a good idea at the time” sweet dark substance." from Feeding Honey Bees for Beginners ? Cookeville BeeKeepers
"An exhaustive chloroform extraction of maple syrup removed the maple flavorants. The extract was analyzed in part by a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer tandem procedure. Several previously undetected flavor-related compounds were found in trace amounts. Among these were the aromatic compounds acetovanillone, guaiacyl acetone and vanilloyl methyl ketone. These aromatics could have resulted from the ethanolysis of ligneous material previously reported in maple sap. Sugar degradation products found were furfural, hydroxymethylfurfural, lactic acid and levulinic acid. These indicate that the products of caramelization also are part of the maple flavorants.
Acids found, in addition to those above, were the C5 to C9 aliphatic acids and oxalic, fumaric and malic acids. All of the acid occurred as ethyl esters resulting from unintentional esterification during extraction. The C, to C, acids may be artifacts perhaps derived from the vegetable oil used as antifoaming agent in syrup processing." ~ Journal of Food Science
Not good for bees--the more impurities present the shorter the lives of the bees (this has been demonstrated in lab test again and again)
Table sugar is best short term if necessary--sucrose, white granulated sugar, table sugar can be dampened with water. It is completely digested by the honey bee, leaving no residue in the gut. Sucrose obtained from sugar cane and from sugar beets. The sugar from each is identical – both are 99.95% sucrose and OK for bees. Bees cannot remove the water from the syrup very well. There is one easy way to feed sucrose, as a solid which makes use of the metabolic water from the bees to make the sucrose available.
Bees need flower nectar to make honey.
"bees can never turn sugar syrup into honey. Harry Potter himself couldn’t do it. Syrup is made from granulated sugar (sucrose) dissolved in water. After the bees get done finagling with it, enzyming it, fanning it, and storing it you still have sugar dissolved in water. The honey bee enzyme invertase changes the form of the sugar from sucrose to glucose and fructose, but it is still sugar syrup—nothing more.
The idea that bees can change syrup into honey comes from the mistaken belief that enzymes in the bee’s honey stomach are responsible for creating honey. But it’s the chemical compounds in nectar—an astounding array of different substances—that gives honey its flavor and aroma. By definition honey is made from the nectar of flowers, so if the substance didn’t come from nectar, it’s not honey.
The important point here is that although syrup cannot be made into honey, bees treat syrup no differently than nectar. If we interfere with the bees’ life processes (by feeding sugar syrup) we must understand the consequences of our actions and take steps to avoid problems."
see: https://honeybeesuite.com/turning-syrup-into-honey/
Last edited:
