Bee Feed: Liquid vs Paste

As you’d expect from being the main UK-based Bee Feed distributors, we get asked about our products a lot.
Our friends at Belgosuc have shared some information to help answer those questions!

Bee Feed in liquid form

This Bee Feed contains more water and is used mainly in Spring, Summer and Autumn.
Although Belgosuc are seeing that liquid Bee Feed is also used more and more throughout the year.

As such liquid Bee Feed has to give the Bee Keepers and Bee Farmers value for money. The bee theoretically should use the feed for 100% but this is in reality completely different.

We have to explain first the energetic value of Bee Feed. The energetic value is the real part of a feed that is used as energy source by the bee. The sugars which give the highest energetic value are fructose and dextrose, as they are the only sugars directly assimilated, even without using enzymes.

The bee can make herself enzymes (but this costs energy) and with the bee’s own invertase the bee can also assimilate sucrose. A bee can not digest maltose and other higher sugars like mannose, galactose, arabinose, xylose, melibiose, raffinose, stachyose, lactose. A bumblebee has more powerful enzymes and can digest maltose and some higher sugars.

It is thus the key to offer a feedstuff with an as high as possible energetic value and on top all restrictions we have seen for the paste Bee Feed.

Bee Feed in paste form

This Bee Feed which has to contain as less water as possible is based on the traditional baker’s fondant. As a spin-off of making baker’s fondant, Belgosuc has developed a dedicated fondant based on a very strict quality driven approach: Fondabee/Fondabeefruc.

Looking to the bee, we know that bees have enzymes that allow them to digest fructose, dextrose and sucrose. Maltose and higher sugars are not digestible and have to be evacuated from the gut of the bee.

In paste Bee Feed Belgosuc Fondabee is using nr.1 refined white sugar controlled on HMF and neonicotinoids. The Bee Feed contains about 90% dry matter and the sugar spectrum is 83.5% sucrose, 3% dextrose (glucose) and only 13.5% maltrose and higher sugars.

Belgosuc has developed its Bee Feed as such that it is softer in the Countries where the dry air has a negative impact on the Bee Feed (Fondabeefruc). Belgosuc secured also that the HMF content of its Bee Feed is less than 20ppm, one of the lowest figures in the industry. Also the amount of SO2 as microbial killer is extremely low.

Belgosuc guarantees a microbiological clean complementary feed stuff approved by the Belgian Food & Feed Authority lab. The Bee Feed is based on selected European beet sugar and European wheat glucose.