fall feeding.
“I’ll be dancing on my desk if it proves out to improve colony vigour over winter,” he commented with a grin. Already, his experiments have shown that with the pouch, designed in 2007 with a polyethylene release membrane and mylar backing, bees bring back more pollen to the hive, more honey is produced, there is more brood comb and more worker bees in a colony. Part of the beneficial effect is probably caused by improved nutrition, according to Borden.
“It causes nurse bees to make enriched protein in their oral glands which is then fed to the queen and the larvae.”
Last spring, Borden’s team completed a year-long study on the effect of SuperBoost on newly- established package bee colonies. Treatments were made during spring and summer nectar flow, when the bees make honey, during fall feeding, and during spring build-up feeding. SuperBoost-treated colonies produced 84 percent more honey, had
more adult bees in the hive at the end of summer and rebounded in the spring to produce more splits, which beekeepers could divide off to make new colonies. At the end of the study, 89 percent of colonies treated with SuperBoost survived, and only 34 per cent of control colonies made it through the year. Better survival provides beekeepers with more revenue from pollination fees and from the honey harvested.
In continuing research over the past summer, Borden’s team verified the increased honey yield with package bee colonies and also demonstrated that established colonies treated with SuperBoost produced 78 percent more honey than untreated control colonies. Borden says a new design for the dispenser provides more access for bees, which contact the pheromone when they walk over the device. It releases a half-milligram a day into the colony. It is hung between the frames, one per hive and lasts for about five weeks.
He recommends that beekeepers use
SuperBoost when the supplementary diet is fed to bees to build up the colony in spring and to prepare them for winter in the fall. It also helps increase honey production from package bees in spring and summer and helps new colonies to get established. The research that resulted in SuperBoost was a collaborative effort led by Borden, including work by Tanya Pankiw of Texas A&M University, and Cam Lait, Jean Pierre Lafontaine and Ervin Kovacs at Contech.
Borden is passionate about the work and delighted with the results. “It feels pretty good. I’m as confident as can be that we’re sitting on a tremendous product,” he comments. In the Fraser Valley, beekeeper Mike Campbell of Abbotsford has been working with Borden on experiments with SuperBoost, and he is so convinced of its efficacy that he will be the local distributor.
It is also available from Contech. For more information, go to the website at:
www.contech-inc.com
“Borrowing
farm business needs” “To see how CIBC Farm Financial Services
12 British Columbia Berry Grower • Winter 2010-11
604-217-5170
250-299-9314
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