We’re glad we can announce that the testing of B+ has passed the international recension, and that the paper has been published in the distinguished scientific journal Preventive Veterinary Medicine!
Below you’ll find the link to the aforementioned paper which represents another proof of our honey bee supplement’s quality, thus providing us with an additional tailwind!
Our honey bee supplement has received another recognition!
A German journalist, Mr. Neils Gründel, has written an unsponsored article about the benefits of B+, which has been published on the Bienen Nachrichten portal, meant for beekeepers in Germany, Switzerland and Austria!
We’re glad that the quality of B+ is starting to get recognized far beyond the borders of Serbia, thus we’re leaving you the link to the aforementioned article – https://bienen-nachrichten.de/node/912 – as well as to the photos which accompany it – https://flickr.com/photos/bienen-nachrichten/ – and for which we’ve also got Mr. Niels Gründel to thank.
We are proud of and excited about the fact that the quality of our honey bee supplement, B+, has been recognized beyond Serbia’s borders, thus we send greetings to our clients from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Austria, and we look forward to further developing the collaboration with them!
I started out feeding 8 honey bee colonies, which is 1 row in my 32-beehive box, type local. Right away, I noticed, with my naked eye, certain liveliness in the beehives. It wasn’t that usual liveliness which occurs during syrup feeding, and which lasts for a short period of time. This one continued throughout the following day! That made me feed a colony which is on the scale all the time B+ as well.
I have to provide a small explanation here: in the area I’m from, at this time of year, the scale usually shows a minus of 100 to 300 grams, even when the weather conditions are favorable, as it’s been the case for more than a month. Another scale, which I have in my village, has confirmed this.
The same way I fed the scaled colony in the beehive box, I fed the scaled colony at home. The next day I noticed that the scales were showing a plus! I thought that I might have miscalculated the added amount of syrup. So, I repeated the procedure – the same outcome! Another day – again, a plus of about 100 grams! The next day I didn’t feed the colonies, but the scales were still showing a plus!
I’ve used a syrup supplemented with B+ 2 times already. After the 1-st time I didn’t find the time to follow up on the effects.
I would like to mention that I wasn’t satisfied with my apiary’s condition, seeing it as I hadn’t found the time to do the usual things in 2 months, due to my professional obligations. On Saturday, 03/10/2020, I was torn apart between going to the Taš Beekeeping Fair, in Belgrade, and going to the apiary.
Eventually, I decided to go to the apiary. I prepared the 2-nd round of the syrup, adding 2 packages of B+ to 75 liters of it, which is about 2.5 times more than the recommended dose. When I went to the apiary yesterday, 04/10/2020, I was in for a surprise…The bees were incredibly active and were behaving as if the acacia or the linden pasture were about to start. They were bringing pollen and were mostly going toward the Palić area, whereas very few were flying toward the Hungarian border and our Hajdukovačka Forest.
The cakes I will be using at the end of February and the beginning of March will definitely be supplemented with B+!
Slobodan Petrovic, a beekeeper from Sabac, implemented B+ on 140 bee colonies in the spring of 2019, achieving outstanding annual average results per beehive:
fruit (flower) honey = 7.8 kg;
rapeseed honey = 23.7 kg;
acacia honey (2 pastures) = 25.7 kg;
linden honey = 17.14 kg;
meadow honey = 3 kg;
virgin wax = 0.55 kg;
105 artificial swarms with 3 frames of a closed brood were formed following the rapeseed pasture.
Thanks to using B+, Slobodan got 77.34 kg of honey per beehive, in total, in 2019!
Slobodan Petrovic, a beekeeper from Sabac, registered, while feeding bee colonies B+, a longer lifespan of honey bees, faster development of bee colonies and faster development of honeycomb during fruit and rapeseed pastures!
Janos Balint, a beekeeper from Zrenjanin, started using B+ on the bee colonies which had been visibly weakened due to sunflower poisoning. He moved the poisoned apiary next to an apiary which had been intact and which, as a result, had been more dominant in terms of bees and broods.
The result of feeding the weakened apiary B+ was the aforementioned apiary becoming more dominant than the apiary which had not been weakened by the effect of pesticides, after the winter. Pleased by the effect achieved, Janos started giving the supplement to nucleus colonies as well, after which he found that B+ contributes to their faster development too!
Uros Ekmecic is a beekeeper from Sabac, who had a problem with honey bees which had been weakened by a case of poisoning. Having been fed B+ throughout the summer, the weakened bee colonies ended up fully recovered for the winter!
Milos Milojkovic, a beekeeper from Kamenovo, used B+ throughout pre-winter feeding. After the winter, in the month of March, the bee colonies whose honey bees had been fed B+ ended up having 2 honey frames and 2 broods more than the bee colonies whose honey bees had received sugar syrup only!
The clinical trials for B+, both in laboratory and field conditions, were carried out in the Department of Biology of the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, under the supervision of prof. dr. Zoran Stanimirovic. The laboratory conditions included testing the supplement on a sample of 1.500 honey bees. Preliminary results indicate a positive effect of B+ on honey bees’ life expectancy/survival rate.
The survival rate of honey bees in the group affected by the microsporidian Nosema ceranae, which had been given B+, was 13.8% higher compared to the group of honey bees which had also been affected by Nosema ceranae spores, but which had been given sugar syrup only. What’s more, as it turned out, B+ had also contributed to a reduction in the number of Nosema ceranae spores!
The honey yield of the bee colonies which had been fed B+ was 14.7% bigger than that of the bee colonies which had received sugar syrup only!