What is Honey-B-Healthy,
and how does it work?
Natural, Organic Bee Medications

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Honey-B-Healthy (HBH) is a honeybee feeding stimulant that contains essential oils, such as lemongrass and spearmint oil. HBH helps promote healthy, vigorous hives. It may be used as a feeding stimulant (in sugar syrup) for late winter, early spring, and during dearths of nectar. You may also add HBH to your feeding mix to help build up packages, nucs and swarms.

Lemongrass oil contains some of the same natural pheromones that bees use to attract workers, such as geraniol. When this oil is applied to the bees and newly-caged queens, they become calm, all having the same natural odor.

HBH helps promote healthy vigorous hives when used as a feeding stimulant. The 16 oz bottle makes up to 24 gallons of solution at one teaspoon (5ml) per quart of 1:1 sucrose or fructose solution. The gallon container makes up to 192 gallons of feeding stimulant. For commercial use we recommend adding one quart of Honey-B-Healthy to a 55-gallon drum of 1:1 sugar syrup.

Use as a feeding stimulant for late winter, early spring, and during dearths of nectar. Also, add to your feeding mix to help build up packages, nucs and swarms.

Helps promote healthy, vigorous hives. The 16 oz. Bottle makes up to 24 gallons of solution at one teaspoon (5ml) or 12 gallons at two teaspoons (10ml) per quart of 1:1 sucrose or fructose solution. This recommended one-teaspoon dose could be increased to two-teaspoons for increased consumption. Use as a feeding stimulant for late winter, early spring, fall feedings and dearths of nectar. Furthermore, add to your feeding mix to help build up packages nucs and swarms. Essential oils are volatile and may evaporate from open containers. We suggest keeping the concentrate and solution mix tightly sealed when kept for extended periods of time.

The concentrate can be mixed in syrup solutions ahead of time and kept in tightly sealed containers and fed when needed. Also, adding a little Honey-B-Healthy along with a little honey to a one pound grease patty helps in the consumption of the patties by the bees.

Lemongrass oil contains some of the same natural pheromones that bees use to attract workers (such as geraniol). When this oil is applied to the bees and new-caged queens, they become calm and all having the same natural odor. 

Feeding Honey-B-Healthy

Use Honey-B-Healthy in early spring and during periods when no nectar is available and to build up packages, nucs and swarms. It is made with lecithin, sodium lauryl sulfate, water, lemongrass oil, and spearmint oil. Two teaspoonfuls in a quart of 1:1 sugar syrup delivers a total of one cc of both essential oils; the essential oils are evenly distributed throughout the syrup. Honey-B-Healthy helps produce rapid build up of bees when used as a feeding stimulant. In addition, using 4 teaspoons in a quart of one to one sugar water of Honey-B-Healthy as a spray instead of smoke helps calm the bees, and spraying caged new queens and bees with Honey-B-Healthy helps with queen acceptance during cage introduction and reduces balling during direct release when sprayed on new queen and bees. It also helps to reduce stings: mix a little on your hands and watch the difference in bee behavior-very few or no stings at all. Acts as a bee calmer when sprayed on the bees and helps prevent fighting when combining nucs, swarms and colonies. When sprayed on new foundation helps encourage the bees to draw out new comb or plastic comb.

Honey-B-Healthy can cause robbing during times of extreme dearths of nectar, especially during the fall. If this occurs we suggest feeding during evening within the hive and reduce the entrance to prevent robbers from entering. 

Other methods to help maintain healthy productive honey bee colonies

Screened bottom boards: [1/8" or 3.15 mm screen] with at least 3/4" [1.9cm] of dead space under the screen. If your screened bottom board does not have a removable tray, make an opening in the back of the bottom board for inserting poster-boards [white demonstration board, coated with Vaseline or petroleum jelly]. This technique takes advantage of the natural mite fall that occurs throughout the year. If you have no sticky material under the screen, mites will crawl back up onto the bees, unless you are using an elevated hive stand; they have no problem crawling as high as 4 inches. Sand works well in place of sticky material--the mites die on sandy surfaces. Some beekeepers have nothing under the screens and the mites fall down into the grass where they cannot get back up to the bees.

Grease patties containing wintergreen and mineral salt: Formula: 4 lbs [1.8 kg] of granulated sugar, 1.5 lbs [.68 kg] of hydrogenated vegetable oil, 1/2lb [.227 kg] of honey, and 1/3 cup [.072 kg] of blended trace mineral salt, and 1.6 ozs [45 cc] of natural or synthetic wintergreen oil; one batch will treat about 8-10 hives, depending on number of brood chambers, size of patties, etc. If too thin when mixed, add a little more granulated sugar, and if too dry (falling apart) add a little more honey. Place 5 small patties (about 2 ozs each) on top of each brood chamber. In addition, a 1/2" [1.27 cm] “roll” across the entrance about 3/4" [1.9 cm] back in (rain will wash it away) can also be used along with the patties on the brood nest. We find that putting the grease patties on in June and leaving them on all year gives good knock down of mites [doubles or triples the natural mite fall through the screened bottom boards] and prevents the mites from building up to such high levels. When the grease patties are used consistently [replaced every 2 weeks or so during the summer], we see no tracheal mites and Varroa mites seldom exceed infestation of 5 cells per 100 in our area. Keep the grease patties on all winter; they need to be checked monthly or so.

"I fed Honey-B-Healthy to seven swarms during the spring of “99” and had never seen colonies buildup so rapidly and draw out such beautiful comb." Also, the brood cappings were nicely rounded with a light color with healthy bees hatching."
Tom Sisler
Former Bee Inspector
Oldtown, MD, September 2000

"I ordinarily don't use smoke except when I encounter a colony which is excessively defensive. In this situation, I obtain better results with H-B-H syrup spray than with smoke. I ordinarily introduce queens with a Thurber Long Cage, but when I used direct introduction with H-B-H syrup spray, the queen was accepted immediately."
Dan Hendricks
Hobbyist Beekeeper
Western Washington State, November 2000

"I fed essential oils (wintergreen and spearmint) along with Apistan to colonies on the verge of collapse from Varroasis for 21 days. After the combination treatment the colonies were practically varroa free and were healthy."
Harry Mallow
Former Bee Inspector
Cumberland, MD, September 2000

"I really do believe in HBH along with regular use of wintergreen grease patties - they are the backbone on reviving and sustaining honey bees at my apiary here in the Mountains of Maryland. They work wonders in maintaining healthy colonies. The HBH stimulates the colonies while the wintergreen grease patties control the mites."
Becky DeWitt
Kitzmiller, Maryland, December 2000

"I use the HBH at 1 teaspoon to a quart and find the bees readily draw out comb on plastic frames faster than they will on wax foundation fed regular sugar syrup. I also requeened a nasty hive of Buckfast and used HBH 4 teaspoons per quart to calm the hive and they accepted the new queen readily in direct release."
Jeff Longstaff
Forest, OH, December 2000

The results were just amazing. I had an explosion of bees so much so that I had to split my original colonies!. So a heart felt thank you."
Reverend Je Kan Adler-Collins MA PGCE
Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, April 2003

"I've started feeding again and have been using the HBH since about January 1, 2003.  This winter is going well for my bees, and I'm pretty sure the HBH is a part of my wintering success.  Last winter I started with 55 colonies and ended with 25 - a disaster.  What's worse is that some of the 25 were so weak that they got taken over by Africanized bees.  This year, I started with 42.  I now have 44!  30 are 8-10 frames or better, which will enable me to rent them to the almonds for top dollar.  The others are receiving weekly HBH and seem to be coming on strong.

The HBH has also been an advantage in requeening the Africanized colonies.  It seems to calm them (a little, kind of, sort of...), but mostly it is beneficial in wiping out their pheromones.  My take rate with these colonies introducing new Italian queens has been 100% when I use the HBH. I understand that this is way above normal; and might be an additional benefit of HBH. I normally introduce the queens indirectly in cages.  I introduce the new queens at the same time I find and kill the old ones.  I spray HBH (3-4 tsp per quart) on the queen cage, then on the frames of brood immediately on either side of where I place the cage, then a general blast in the upper and lower box.  I have not lost a queen yet with this method.”
M Mosco
Vista, CA March 2003

“I find that spraying the interior parts of a hive reduces by about half the amount of time it takes to get a swarm to voluntarily enter the hive.”
Fred C. Hollen
Waynesboro, Va June 2003

These testimonials are not necessarily the findings of the HBH founders.

Honey-B-Healthy
Honeybee Medications

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