Need a Honey Bee Healthy recipe for making your own Honey Bee Healthy supplement? With the price of the actual product being over $120 per gallon, it makes sense to make your own for pennies on the dollar.
Honey-Bee-Healthy is a product used by many beekeepers to spur feeding behavior in honey bees. It will stimulate the desire to feed and therefore adding this to your sugar syrup will ensure the bees take it faster, and it also adds many nutrients the bees need, especially in the spring and fall, or anytime there is a nectar dearth on. This Honey-Bee-Healthy recipe can be used just like the actual product and is nearly identicle in composition.
Recipe 1:
This Honey bee healthy recipe is great in the fall as a means to ward off digestive issues with bees who must hold their waste all winter. Most say it helps with the gastro-intestinal distress of the bees and wards off Nosema. I make no claims about this personally but i do use it for my bees as a precaution. Ingredients: 5 cups water 2 1/2 pounds of white granulated sugar 1/8 teaspoon lecithin granules (used as an emulsifier) 15 drops spearmint oil 15 drops lemongrass oil
Directions:
Add the oils and lecithin to a blender with 1 cup of water. Blend on high for 5 minutes. Use the remaining 4 cups of water and sugar to make a sugar syrup. Now add the emulsified oils from the blender into the syrup. Feed directly to bees.
Notes:
Scale the recipe up to make as much as you need.
Recipe 2:
Ingredients:
10 drops spearmint essential oil 10 drops lemongrass essential oil 5 drops eucalyptus essential oil 5 drops tea tree essential oil 1/4 tsp lecithin granules 2 cups hot water
Directions:
Add all ingredients to a blender and emulsify on high speed for 5 minutes. Add this mixture to a quart jar and fill with water to full.
Notes:
You now have a concentrate which you will use to make smaller batches. Add 2 Tblsp of the concentrate to 1 gallon of 2:1 sugar syrup and feed to your bees.
In Swarm Traps:
Use recipe #2 for swarm traps by placing several drops of the honey bee healthy recipe concentrate in your trap box before placing it on location.
Active Ingredients:
Spearmint essential oil helps with tracheal mites Lemongrass essential oil is an attractant Eucalyptus essential oil is good to repel small hive beetle and mites Tea tree essential oil is an anti-fungal and antimicrobial Lecithin is good for overall health
***Note Lecithin is a fat, and can leave a residue on your blender, we advise using common sense and not using your good blender :) Pick up a used one at a yard sale! ***