My brother will be tapping some maple trees for the first time this year. He has one hive and was wondering if maple sap can be fed to the bees without harm. My husband thought he read somewhere that sap should never be fed to bees.
It might make an interesting experiment, but I don't think it has practical value.
1)Sap is only about 2%sugar and so is barely attractive from that standpoint.
2)Sap runs so early in the year the temperatures are likely still too cold for the bees to make much use of it.
3)Sap is fairly perishable(similar to milk I understand) and so you would need to freeze it or at least refrigerate it to keep it from molding.
If you were willing to boil it down a bit, not all the way to syrup, but enough to get the sugar content up to where the bees will definitely be interested that might work. But that involves labor, time, and money(heating) on your part and there would always be concern that in boiling the sap down you could be creating compounds that would end up being harmful to the bees.
So I guess it all comes down to how bad you want to know the bees answer to your question :)
I've seen people post pictures here of bees licking up sap from a maple stump of a recently cut down tree.
NC weather is not NY weather, but here we cut strips out of the maple bark and the bees cover them on warmer days. We have also driven copper tubes in at the bottom of the slots and hung jars from them to catch the sap. Then feed it to the bees.
Good or bad, I don't know from a scientific angle, but the hives live fine afterward.
Yeah, the bees like it when the trees are weeping, but at only 2% sugar I'm guessing it has more to do with the easily available water than it does the sugar food.
Rick
My guess is this as well.
Quote from: Scadsobees on March 06, 2010, 12:51:30 AM
Yeah, the bees like it when the trees are weeping, but at only 2% sugar I'm guessing it has more to do with the easily available water than it does the sugar food.
Rick
Maple syrup should never be feed to bees.
BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)