The bees are in trouble again. If you see one that is exhausted give them a sugar-water mixture which will give them the energy boost they need to get back to the hive. You probably saw this advice on Facebook where it was first posted, and then shared thousands of times. You have just experienced the birth of a new gardening myth.
The image below shows part of the original Facebook post.
Around the middle of July, 2018, the BBC asked Facebook to remove the post since it was fake news, and thankfully, they complied. In fact, I had a hard time finding a copy for this post.
What did Sir David Attenborough really say? Is it a good idea to feed sugar to bees? Do bees get exhausted and need our help? All good questions that will be discussed in this post.
A Garden Myth is Born
I don’t know who started the myth, but someone created it on their Facebook page – anyone can do that. They then posted it on some public sites and people shared the post. After all, everybody cares about the bees and we don’t want to die in 4 years.
The post went viral. I saw it on several gardening groups and right away people posted that they would do this – it is the least they could do to save the bee. People even posted pictures of bees drinking from spoons containing water and sugar.
I wonder if the author of this myth is sitting in front of their computer, laughing their head off?
One of the problems with this post is that they included the name, Sir David Attenborough, a well known broadcaster and naturalist. The BBC looked into the matter and determined it was all fake news, so they asked Facebook to take down the post. They not only removed the original post, but many of the shared posts have also disappeared.
Thank you Facebook.
As far as I can tell Sir David Attenborough never said anything about bees and feeding them sugar.
What Is The Harm in a Little Fun?
It seems like no big deal, but it is more serious that you might think.
Millions of people have now seen the information and they believe you should feed bees. Very few will see my post and other news items that dispel the myth. They will go on believing the myth, and for next 100 years they will be telling their children and grand children to feed the bees. You can’t kill a myth once it starts.
Does feeding bees with sugar water do any harm? Yes it does. I’ll discuss several issues in more detail below, but a serious problem is that some people can’t follow instructions. They have morphed the myth into a better solution; feed the bees with honey and that can be deadly for bees.
Are Bees Dying?
The post says “In the last 5 years the bee population has dropped by 1/3”. Which bee population are they talking about? Honey bees? Native bees?
Honey bee populations have not declined over the last 5 years. There were larger loss than normal this past winter in North America, but that was due to the cold weather. Overall honey bee populations are on the rise.
Native bee populations are probably down, but we don’t have data to reach any conclusion.
The data used in the post is completely fabricated.
Without Bees We Die in Four Years
Honey bees are not dying – the numbers are on the increase, and since they are farmed animals we can make more new hives without too much trouble.
Even if all the bees died, we would still have other food to eat. This 4 year thing is nonsense.
Do Bees Need To Be Fed?
Beekeepers do feed their hives in the middle of winter if the stored food in the hive runs out, and they do use sugar solutions. But this is done because there are no flowers open at this time of year to feed the bees. They don’t normally feed sugar water to bees during the rest of the year.
If the bees’ foraging trips are so exhausting don’t you think that beekeepers would have a bowl of sugar water waiting for them at the hive?
They don’t need an extra feeding of sugar.
Why Do Some Bees Look Exhausted?
There are lots of reports of bees just sitting. No movement and no flying – they look exhausted. They must need an energy boost!
Bees don’t live forever. Their lifespan depends on the type of bee and their role in life. Worker honey bees that are born in the spring only live for 6 weeks because they work hard collecting pollen and nectar. Male bumblebees only live a couple of weeks. A bee that is near the end of its life does not fly around very well.
That bee that looks exhausted may need a rest, but there is a very good chance that it is dying. Feeding it won’t change that.
One Beekeeper put it this way,”Bees can and will die from exhaustion, but making sugary food sources available to save lethargic bees may be doing more damage than good.”
Can a Little Sugar Water Harm The Bees?
Bees don’t need to be fed, but feeding them a bit of sugar water from a spoon won’t do any harm provided this is a one time thing. The problem is that people have expanded on the myth. If a bit of sugar water for an exhausted bee is good, then a lot of sugar water for all the bees must be better. People are starting to leave out bowls full of the stuff, or even adding it to their bird baths.
Beekeepers warn that this can have serious consequences. Bees take short cuts. If they can get sugar easily from a bowl rather than visiting a hundred flowers, they will do that. Upon returning to the hive they’ll tell their buddies and the rest of the colony to do the same. Before you know it, you have hundreds of bees.
Not a big deal you say, but the bees store this sugar water in the hive along with the honey. They effectively make watered down honey. That is not good for the bees and nobody wants to buy watered down honey. Beekeepers are asking you not to do this.
What is Wrong With Feeding Honey To Bees?
Honey can contain spores of a bacteria called Paenibacillus which causes AFD (American Foul Brood disease). It is deadly to bees. The honey you feed to the bee will be taken back to the hive. If your honey contains this pathogen, there is a good chance it will infect the whole hive. In Australia it is illegal to feed honey to bees.
The treatment for this disease is to burn the whole hive, including the bees.
The disease is fairly rare, but it does happen. Honey should never be fed to bees in your garden.
Bees are notoriously known to dehydrate in extreme dry hot weather. It’s not always exhaustion or their short life span. I’ve often had several land over the years on the balcony in hot weather and very despondent. A couple of drops of sugar water with the correct ratio helps them rehydrate and get going again. If they’re dying, they won’t drink, that’s how you know the difference. I’ve even got photos of the little girls drinking, of which they become respondent again and take off.
How to help a bee that fell in the pool ? That is sluggish when you get it out ?
Healthy bees don’t fall into pools – it is probably dying.
It is probably dying? How do you know?
I am a beekeeper from South Africa. My bees are fed cappings, which in case you may not know, are the remains of the wax, propolis, pollen, and honey, once I have spun the honey out of the frames.
Bees need water, and if the body of water is large, they do indeed drown. My bee watering holes have lots of rocks onto which they can climb once they have drunk their fill, because they do fall into pools, and if they cannot get out, they drown. Simple.
If you can, put slivers of watermelon down for them, or crushed banana.
C4 and C3 sugars are completely different.
1 teaspoon of sugar contains 13 calories, that is all.
1 teaspoon of honey contains 20 calories, amino acids, vitamins, zinc, trace amounts of pollen, fructose, and many other good things. Look it up sir, and while you do, read ”Robbing the Bees”. It may give you a better understanding of bees.
In summer bees live between 15 and 25 days. In winter, because the food is scarce, they do not fly as much as in summer, and subsequently they live longer, up to 45 days.
You should do a beekeeping course, then you may learn a something from our little honey suppliers.
I fed bees with sugar water. And banana it has helped up the bee population in each hive
Thank you for this article. I just saw a bee on my farmer’s porch that seemed off. My fist instinct was to give sugar water because yes I’ve seen the info shared about a hundred times. I googled it to see if I could find the correct ratio and how to do it right and stumbled across this info.
Sad to see a bee who might be in trouble, but glad I’m more informed now.
I have found in the last 2 days 2 bees on a plant in my garden in the middle of a huge rainstorm I kept checking on them and 4 hours later they still hadn’t moved I think it was because there wings were wet or too cold I got both of them in to a separate plastic container with a spoon of sugar water they paid no attention at all to the sugar water so I turned the containers on there side so they could get out easily and they could at least dry out and fly away when ready which they did after about 15 mins drying. I think maybe I should have left them on the plant to begin with but I thought they were in trouble and was trying to help them.
If bees needed help drying out from a rain – they would be extinct.
Robert Pavlis I leave little towels lying around for them.
I have been feeding exhausted bees for decades. Sugar solution, diluted treacle. Strangely even undiluted treacle works. Once fed you can occasionally watch them take off with gusto. I have never seen the swarm of bees reported here return for more feed. I always refrain from using honey, but my thought there is that honey will have the odour from other hives and any bee carrying a odour from a foreign hive will be stung to death as it enters the hive.
if you’ve been doing this for decades, then clearly that means bees have been returning for more.
What I got from that is the beekeepers will get watered down honey and may attract a swarm of bees if you leave a feeding station for them .
If any species needs help then we should help them , leaving something to die just because it’s nature’s way is an awful thing to put into anyone’s mindset!
Not really. Bees die of old age – you can’t stop that.
What the hell? Sugar water is crappy bee food. Did you know that sugar water honey is considered to be not for human consumption? I will feed my hives sugar water, but only when they are struggling (or new) and I put in additives to make it more nutritious. That honey is still less nutritious than the nectar-derived stuff and not fit for human consumption. If you want to help bees, stop giving them empty calories, plant some native flower species if you want. Just leave the bee. In the amount of time it took you to make that sugar water the queen has probably laid 50 more eggs in its place. God will not be angry at you for abandoning what is likely the 200th bee from that hive to die today.
I just saw the post yesterday thanks for this information.
Thank you for this post. It is my first year as a bee keeper. I bought honey bees from a local farmer.i watched the bees all summer and couldn’t help but notice strange bee behaviour.Come September the farmer contacted me and told me to feed them a 5gallon pail size sugar/water solution. I did not.i started researching and found the problem.i panicked and fed the bees a small jar of sugarwater daily for 2 weeks. All of my bees were dead by October.they died of starvation….IN OCTOBER!! Hooked on sugarcrack, these bees behaviour changed dramatically. Bee farmers found they can produce large amounts of honey if they feed the bees sugar water. A BIG problem.
Your bees did not die because of some big Ag conspiracy. They died because you thought you knew more than a bee farmer with more experience than you. You waited until the last minute to feed your first year hive even when advised to feed earlier. A hive needs 70 lbs of honey to survive winter (at least in the north) and in the first year they are living hand to mouth and can’t store much honey. There is a reason only 20% of wild hives survive their first year. As for strange BEEhavior, there are many strange ways a hive can behave. You must be more specific.
Beekeepers only feed sugar water when honey stores during periods of dirth (no natural sources of nectar). This is because a portion of the honey stored for winter use is harvested for human consumption. Sugar water is NOT used to increase honey production for human consumption.
I found a bumble bee on the ground … he couldn’t do anything apart from fall over on his back so I gave him some sugar water … which he got on his legs then licked the tiniest bit off and that gave him the energy to fly away straight into the flowers … eating pollen as happy as can be!