What's In Your Spray Bottle?

I can tell you that in mine you'll find Honey-B-Healthy.

I "discovered" HBH about two years ago.  At the time I was just wanting to try it out as a stimulant for Spring rearing by mixing it it with 1:1 sugar syrup.

At this point, I cannot see being a beekeeper without it.  It helps with so much more than that.

Mind you, this is all circumstantial evidence, but hey, I believe what I see with my own eyes.

Here are things that I do with HBH that help my beekeeping;

1) Stimulate brood rearing as a feed additive.

2) Spray directly onto queens (usually HBH mixed with water or even not mixed at all) when they are introduced into a colony as a replacement.  The bees just seemingly automatically and unquestioningly accept her even without spending time in a cage.

3) Mix with water to use instead of a smoker.  This seems especially useful when dealing with swarms, cut outs and trap outs.  Spray the bees a bit if they are flying a bit too much or they seem a little too grouchy.  Takes most of the grouchy right outta them.

4) Spray onto frames or foundation to encourage bees to draw wax there.  This seems to especially work well when used as a mix of 1:1 sugar syrup with HBH.  I have been using leftover black plastic foundation that I noticed bees have been reluctant to draw out in the past.  I had a need for the foundation recently and thought it might be interesting to see if the HBH would help that out any.

WOW, did itever!  On average, I have found that bees will draw out frames sprayed with HBH almost completely within 5 days and often sooner.

I still use a smoker on hive inspections, but boy is that spray bottle with HBH handy for working with bees outside of a typical hive inspection scenario.