Composition and Quality of Honey Bee Feed: The Methodology and Monitoring of Candy Boards.

Simple Summary: The nutritional status of honey bee colonies is a crucial point for honey bee colony health, as inadequate nectar and pollen flow can lead to colony development issues, increased pathogen proliferation, and reduced colony activity and strength. Beekeepers are thus encouraged to use food supplements or substitutes to correct nutritional imbalances. With a growing market driven by minimal regulation and beekeeper demand, the market offers numerous bee food supplements with varying and sometimes undefined compositions, claiming benefits such as brood stimulation, energy supplementation, and disease prevention. Through the analysis of a short set of physico-chemical characteristics, it was possible to find differences between the values found and the ones displayed on the label, demonstrating the need for regulation of the quality of these products. The nutritional status of a honey bee colony is recognized as a key factor in ensuring a healthy hive. A deficient flow of nectar and pollen in the honey bee colony immediately affects its development, making room for pathogen proliferation and, consequently, for a reduction in the activities and strength of the colony. It is, therefore, urgent for the beekeepers to use more food supplements and/or substitutes in apiary management, allowing them to address colony nutritional imbalances according to the beekeeper's desired results. In this context, the commercial market for beekeeping products is growing rapidly due to low regulation of animal food products and the beekeeper's willingness to guarantee healthy colonies. There are numerous products (bee food additives) currently available on the worldwide market, with a highly variable and sometimes even undefined composition, claiming a set of actions at the level of brood stimulation, energy supplementation, queen rearing support, reduction of Varroa reproduction levels, improvement of the intestinal microflora of bees, Nosema prevention, and improvement of the health of honey bee colonies infested by American foulbrood, among others. To address this issue, the members of the COLOSS (Honey Bee Research Association) NUTRITION Task Force are proposing, for the first time, action on honey bee feed control and monitoring. In our common study, we focused on candy board composition and quality parameters. For that, a selected number of commercial candy boards usually found in Europe were analyzed in terms of water and ash content, pH, acidity, 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, sugars, C3-C4 sugar origin, and texture. Results revealed differences between the values found and the ones displayed on the label, demonstrating the need for regulation of the quality of these products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]