Advantages of API

Not all feeds are created equal. For more than 40 years, Südzucker, Europe’s largest sugar producer, has been using its extensive knowledge and many years of experience to offer the API quality range of feeding products.

Advantages of API

Not all feeds are created equal. For more than 40 years, Südzucker, Europe’s largest sugar producer, has been using its extensive knowledge and many years of experience to offer the API quality range of feeding products.

Advantages of API: Nutritional Advantage

When necessary, alternative feeds have an impact on the health and productivity of bees. Choosing the right product is therefore of great importance. The natural bee food, honey, consists of 80% sugars. Any alternative food should therefore contain this important component. Südzucker’s sugar-based feed products fully meet these requirements by providing optimum nutrition for your bees. Other feed products such as starch-based products have a different composition and therefore do not really correspond to the natural diet of bees.

Advantages of API: Economic advantage

When comparing the cost and performance of different feed products, it is not enough to consider only their selling price. To be able to assess the real costs, the quantities of food that are stored and usable into the combs must be taken as a basis.

If APIINVERT® is compared to a sugar solution, it appears that the costs per kilogram of product stored into the combs are approximately the same. Due to its higher dry matter content, however, the output of APIINVERT® feed syrup is about 15% higher than that of a sucrose solution in a 3:2 ratio.

When comparing the costs of APIINVERT® and commercially available products from starch saccharification , starch-based products initially appear to be cheaper. APIINVERT® contains only sugars that the bee can metabolize completely. Bee feed made from corn or wheat starch contains up to 20% higher types of sugars, which nature, including bees, does not recognize and which are only partially usable by bees. This results in a lower exploitation of this type of feed, up to 15 %, compared to API quality feed. In comparison, up to 15% more starch-based feed must be fed to maintain the same supply to the bees. The alleged price advantage is thus totally or partially cancelled.