What is the typical pH of nectar?

Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum

Help Support Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

boca

House Bee
Joined
Feb 25, 2011
Messages
141
Reaction score
0
Location
North Italy
Hive Type
Langstroth
In Italy some beekeeper mix the juice of a lemon in 10 kg of sugar to make syrup.

Could it help in inverting the sugar quickly in autumn?


http://www.eng.umd.edu/~nsw/ench485/lab14.htm
In contrary to most other enzymes, invertase exhibits relatively high activity over a broad range of pH (3.5--5.5), with the optimum near pH=4.5.

Perhaps they use even olive oil in pollen patties :).
 
"In Italy some beekeeper mix the juice of a lemon in 10 kg of sugar to make syrup.

Could it help in inverting the sugar quickly in autumn?"


Yes - used widely like cream of tartar to invert when making fondant.
 
Bee's stomach inverts the sugar. Sucrose goes into blood circulation as glugose and as fructose.
No inverting is needed.


Bee's stomack splits starch too.
 
Lemon juice in sugar syrup

I know that there is no need to invert the sugar before fed to the bees. Actually it makes things worst.

What I'm interested in is not the inverting of sugar with acid, but make the inversion easier to the bees in autumn when they have to do it as quickly as possible.

According to my calculations the pH of 0.00001 M of citric acid is 4.7, ideal to do the job.
That means about 0.2 g citric acid in 10 litres of sugar syrup.

Lemon juice contains about 5 g citric acid in 100mL.

Therefore, theoretically 5 ml lemon juice in 10 L syrup makes the optimal pH for inverting the sugar.

That is so little, I think, that it would hardly change the taste.

Usually juices of a plant are slightly acidic, probably the nectar too.
 
What is the typical pH of nectar?

Was the question but it seems the real question is to do with inverting syrup which is not really the same thing?

I am confused.

PH
 
What is the typical pH of nectar?

Was the question but it seems the real question is to do with inverting syrup which is not really the same thing?

I am confused.

PH

My question is still:

What is the typical pH of nectar?



And as an explanation why I am interested:
The bees invert the sucrose syrup when storing for winter. That is to increase the osmotic pressure and reduce crystallization.

Bees use invertase ensyme to do that.
The optimum pH for invertase is 4.5.

I assume if we change the pH of the syrup from 7 to 4.5 we can help to store the syrup faster.

I think logical that the nectar is slightly acidic like most liquids from a plant. So, I assume, my sugar syrup lemonade wold be similar to natural nectar, but I don't know.
 
According to Yates ( a UK published book for "2 hive" keepers) the ph of necatar is 2.7 - 6.4.
 
In that case the Italian wisdom of 1 lemon for 10 kg matches the theory.

And according to their experience bees love the lemonade!
 
..

There are modern "honey bee nutrition" papers. They are good and under 10 years old.
None of them recommends change pH or invert cane sugar.

Papers have been made for professional beekeeping.
 
Last edited:
necatar is 2.7 - 6.4.

Thare will always be a range but three to four is typical.

I would be fairly confident that the honeydews may be some of the exceptional ones. However, in the UK Trading standards would be checking sucrose levels very carefully if around six because that is the typical pH of sugar syrup. So no real correlation re taking down sugar syrup for storing in tyhe autumn, I would think - simply the closer to ~20% moisture the better, as far as the bees are concerned.

Material transfer is the name of the game for them. Same when shifting honey, as some may have found out, after leaving a small hole/gap in a super they are trying to clear! The limiting factor is getting the moisture right, I would think.
 
Why does it make things worse?

One property of sucrose is that it is the sweetest sugar for bees. (humans feel fructose sweeter). By inverting, it becomes less attractive to bees.
Another reason is that acidic hydrolysis of sucrose produce HMF (hydroxymethylfurfural), not the best in winter food.


Recently I have learned that my reasoning is flawed because invertase is only one of the enzymes splitting sucrose. Honeybees produce more than one sucrase enzymes with different properties.
 
Several big producers of inverted syrup feed, especially for bees, have got it wrong then,less attractive to bees and all that.
 
Not the producer but the consumer has to decide what is good or bad.

AKAIK the inverted sugar syrup feed is not inverted cane or beet sugar but glucose-fructose syrup produced from subsidised and ad nauseum produced corn and wheat.
 
No offence boca but this discussion is a little silly.

Bees collect nectars of various acidities and manage well.

PH
 
Boca....from another thread...

If you look up the Sudzucker website and research Api-invert (using that name here as it is the one I mentioned in the post) you will find that any similarity to the product you mention is slight. In ALL the main products sold as 'designer' bee syrups in the EU the main constituent is fructose.

Api-invert is made from beet sugar only...........as is Ambrosia. Some other products are blends of starch derived syrups and white sugar derived syrups.

I respect all you say as you have an expertise in serious winter conditions probably unrivalled on this forum..........BUT.......your extreme conditons require extreme measures, whereas in the UK, even up here in Scotland, by your standards our winters are very mild.

In extensive experimentation we have demonstrated to our sufficient satisfaction that most of these syrups are the best winter food you can possibly buy. I would rank the common foods in this order, always supposing you can get an adequate (but not excessive) amount of stores into the hive for winter.

1. Top rated branded syrups
2. White sugar syrup
3. Fondant (and this is top rated emergency food any time in winter, and for those colonies inadequately fed before the onset of cold conditions.)
4. Second ranked syrups (100% starch derived), but only this low in the rankings due to high consumption rates, otherwise they are fine.
5. Home made candy
6. Their own honey
982. Other honey.

Since moving away from made up syrup onto Ambrosia initially, then Api invert, and now Apisuc or Invert Bee our bees have never looked better going into winter.

Our conditions are not like Finnish ones, and our bees tend to be very different too, with smaller clusters and far lower stores needs. Regular cleansing flights during winter are the normal, and a six week shut in due to weather would be very rare.

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=14521

http://www.bienenfutter.eu/en/Produkte/Fertigfutter-fuer-die-Imkerei/
 

Similar threads

Back
Top