The effectiveness of using glucose-fructose syrup for feeding bees in under cover conditions

Abstract

The beekeeping practice provides for using stimulating feeding of the bee colonies in order to accelerate their growth and development. Sugar syrup is usually used to feeding bees. Despite the obvious benefits, sugar syrup use as a feed additive which has a number of disadvantages. This is due to the different origin of such syrup (beet, sugarcane, corn, fructose syrup, etc.) and, accordingly, different effects on the physiological and metabolic processes of the body and the life of bees and their colonies as a whole. In recent years, scientific research has intensified in many countries of the world to find new substitutes for sugar syrup to feed bee colonies. One of the artificial substitutes for carbohydrate feed to bees is glucose-fructose syrup content of reducing sugars close to honey and exceed to invert syrup. Glucose-fructose syrup is produced mainly from high-quality corn starch by enzymatic hydrolysis to glucose, followed by isomerization part of glucose into fructose and subsequent purification through coal core and ion exchange resins. It contains all the essential amino acids, trace elements, B vitamins, and does not require the release of a large amount of enzyme by bees, as is in the case of sugar syrup. Its use as a feed additive increases the bees life span does not lead them to expired, preserves the activity of their hypopharyngeal glands and allows to put food directly into the cells. The article presents results of the research on the effectiveness of stimulating the development of bee colonies and pollination of cucumbers in under cover conditions for using glucose-fructose syrup. It has found that for stimulating feeding of the bee colonies are used glucose-fructose syrup at the rate of 200 g per day in under cover conditions, against the background of the presence sufficient feed honey and bee bread in the nests, contributes to an increase the amount of brood grown by 13.5 % (P < 0.01) and the amount of pollen brought by them by 20.1 %.