okay so this is a video that a lot of my YouTube followers and the honeybee
enthusiasts have been asking for for a long time and we're gonna do a sea salt
comparison to see what the honeybees prefer when we mix it with water so that
they can get the benefits of all these fantastic minerals and I'm introducing
the sea salts here first celtic sea salt I have to say has the most elaborate
packaging and the most extensive claims to the health and nutritional benefits
of any of the sea salts and I'm testing here today the nutrition facts they also
say it's non-gmo when it comes to minerals I don't know how you genetically
modify them but maybe somebody else knows better sea salts are sodium and we also
have Morton natural sea salts it's another one that I grabbed and just like
it says here on the box it's for all cooking now all the salts that we're
using are suitable for human consumption so I'm guessing that they're good for
the bees the reason that we're on this in the first place is because the bees
showed a preference for water that had salt content over regular pure filtered
water and again the nutritional facts here for the morton salt and this comes
from the bahamas so these are you know distilled from natural seawater it's
dehydrated down until we have the salts and minerals left over and i'm just
giving you a brief look at each of the packages so that you'll kind of know
what they look like where they came from who's making them and providing them so
we're out here by my pond and here's the one pure Himalayan pink crystals salt 84
minerals so we know that the bees need minerals and salts and that they need
all these things they find them in the environment where do they find them I
don't know but we're gonna make it easy for them to get at this in solution so
these are finely ground sea salts and all of these I purchased from Amazon and
I'll give you the link so that you can look at them read reviews of course
reviews are based on human consumption and what it tasted like
this pink Himalayan sea salt some people even question whether or not it has some
sugar added or something but that is not the ingredients it just apparently has a
really good flavor so again the labeling on the back here and it even has a
shelf-life 2023 and then of course the nutritional facts so these are packaged
nice and fancy don't forget you always have to keep pure filtered fresh water
that's free of anything and that's what these feeders have in them so aside from
the sea salts we're going to have filtered water available as always in
the Bee yard here's how we've laid it out as always
based on my past testing we have 4 1 quart containers they started off with
fresh pure filtered water and the water source is well water and the filter
system is PU R which was the highest and filtering medium that I could find for
again intended for people to drink so the Bees showed a preference for that in
the past that's our baseline the reason that the water is a little colored here
is because this time I added two drops of green food coloring per quart so that
we could see the levels better and the bees are going after these sea salts
right away and as you can see they actually prefer this over fresh water
that does not have the high mineral content now we arrived at the one
teaspoon per quart based on my last experience which was done with just
table salt and we added different amounts of table salt per quart and the
bees preferred the 1 teaspoon per quart of salts over other content levels so
here the bees are just going after everything here and you might be
surprised that these end results as to what the bees show up reverence for but
I will say overall the preference of the honeybees is to go after water that has
mineral content this is number one they chose Morton sea salts over the others
and number two in the lineup is the most popular crystal sea salt Himalayan pink
crystal and this is the one that everyone has been asking me to try out
with the bees so I did number three in the lineup is one
teaspoon per quart of Celtic sea salt that was the most expensive by the way
and of course last on the list no big surprise one teaspoon per quart of stone
mill iodized table salt this is a regular table salt that most people put
on their table there are extensive benefits claimed regarding the sea salt
over table salt the bees really don't show a huge preference of any of these
over the other as you can see the levels here now the duration of this test was
actually four days and one teaspoon per quart of Mortain sea salt was preferred
but look across the board it's not like they chose it two-to-one the bees are
gonna go after water that has mineral content and they need it and they use it
and there's some discussion about how the bees might be using mineralized
water as part of their dehydration process inside the hive when they're
dehydrating honey and nectar that does not mean that they're putting these sea
salts into the honey and nectar cells they're using it as a coolant process
but of course for health nutrition and well-being of the bees themselves having
access to minerals is going to benefit them and they definitely if we're
looking to the bees for guidelines on what's good for them if we're making all
these options available they're telling us pretty conspicuously that they want
water with minerals in it and again if nothing else is available of course
you're gonna take that iodized table salt but it is their last of the four
tested sea salts here and here we have it so that's the summary just closing
out with a slow-motion look here of my landing board we have a lot going in the
bee yard right now we just installed the flow hive two and I put it in the bee
yard without anything except swarm commander I'm trying to find out if a
swarm of bees is gonna home in there and just take it over and just before I
started editing this video I was on in the apiary and there are guard bees and
Scouts already checking out the flow hive two it has no resources in it in
has acorn waxed frames in it and of course the flow hive frames it's gonna
be interesting to share with you how that goes I'd like to attract a swarm to
it without doing any honeybee install at all so look for that in upcoming videos
it's going to be interesting I promise they are actually setting up shop the
Scout bees are even guarding the empty hive so I think they're acting as
placeholders keep watching thanks for watching this video and I hope you found
the information helpful thanks for watching