Feeding sugar syrup to honey bee colonies to improve pollination: A review

A wide range of management techniques are available for improving honey bee (Apis mellifera) pollination of crops. Feeding sugar syrup was among the earliest of these developed. Three basic approaches to sugar feeding have been used to improve pollination, which can be categorized by their hypothesized mode of action. These are: attracting bees to a crop by spraying it with sugar syrup; directing bees to a crop by feeding scented syrup either inside or outside their hive; feeding syrup inside hives to increase the number of pollen gatherers.