Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => EQUIPMENT USAGE, EXPERIMENTATION, HIVE PLANS, CONSTRUCTION TIPS AND TOOLS => Topic started by: wildcody on May 04, 2010, 09:12:55 pm

Title: Honey bee healthy formula
Post by: wildcody on May 04, 2010, 09:12:55 pm

Hello everyone new to beekeeping got a couple of questions if anyone could help out i would appreciate it. In makeing you're own hbh can you use peppermint instead of spearmint? and when making sugar water do you use pure cane sugar or granulated sugar? thanks

Title: Re: Honey bee healthy formula
Post by: ruth on May 08, 2010, 08:07:33 pm

Surely granulated sugar IS pure cane sugar....

I just bought a 25lb bag of granulated sugar, which is pure sugar.

If you are making your own HHB mix I would suggest (as a chemist, not a beekeeper, since I am also new!) that you make certain you use pure essential oils not synthetic ones as the synthetic ones tend to go "stale" sooner.  Make sure they don't have additives either.

Not sure whether peppermint would replace spearmint and have the same effect - the chemical structure is not the same, but is similar.  Not sure how critical  that is.

Title: Re: Honey bee healthy formula
Post by: wd on May 08, 2010, 08:55:02 pm

just a post for the read related to your question

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=238975&highlight=formula (http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=238975&highlight=formula)

http://www.beesource.com/forums/search.php?searchid=2932641 (http://www.beesource.com/forums/search.php?searchid=2932641)