Maintenance Cost

If bees cannot feed themselves from gathering enough pollen and nectar from flowering plants nor stored honey, it is crucial for beekeepers to provide supplemental feeding. This will cause additional cost to maintain the bee hives each year. Since there are many
different types of supplemental feeding, the only available information is provided here for reference:

Supplemental pollens

¹

If  bees are ill, beekeepers may need to purchase treatment to save the colony.

The same as supplemental feeding, there are many different kinds of treatment to each disease so it is nearly impossible to provide comprehensive information on the cost of treatments. However, we will use antibiotic Fumagilian as an example to estimate the cost. A bottle of 24 g Fumagillin – B 24g costs $20.00  ² . Generally 1 gram of active fumagilin is enough for 5 – 6 colonies.  It is recommended to mix one teaspoon of fumagilin with 1 gallon of sugar syrup and give it to the bees, so that 1 gallon of treatment is given to one chamber full of bees ³.

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¹ Firman Pollen Co. Pricing. Retrieved March 18, 2012 from: http://www.firmanpollen.com/pricing.html
² Muno Honey & Muno Meadery. Munro Honey Products. Retrieved from April 2, 2012 from: http://www.munrohoney.com/products.aspx?cid=Treatment
³ Nosema. Fumagilin Treatment. Retrieved from April 2, 2012 from: http://www.beekeepingstarter.com/nosema.html