The Best Bee Feed Supplements (2026)

The behavior change is real and it happens fast. Put plain syrup on a hive that is not especially hungry and it can sit there for days, gradually going cloudy. Put syrup mixed with Honey B Healthy Original at the label rate on the same hive and bees find it and work it noticeably faster. The lemongrass component is the reason: it reads to bees like the Nasonov pheromone they use to mark a good spot, which is why the same oil shows up in swarm lures. Spearmint rounds out the scent profile. Neither is exotic, and the effect is on foraging behavior rather than physiology.

Mix it per the label and no heavier. More is not better with essential oils, and an over-dosed syrup can be repellent rather than attractive, which is exactly the opposite of the effect you paid for. The 16 ounce bottle makes a great many gallons of mixed feed at label rates, so the per-feeding cost is small even though the bottle price is not trivial. Store it away from heat and shake it before use, since emulsified oil products separate over time.

Now the boundary, stated plainly: this is not a mite treatment and not a medication. Essential oils in syrup do not control varroa, and treating a mite problem with feeding supplements is how colonies get lost in the fall while the beekeeper feels productive. Monitor mites with a wash or a sticky board, treat when you cross threshold, and read our mite monitoring guide and treatment guide for that entirely separate job. Feed supplements support a colony you are also managing properly; they do not replace the management.

Buy for the feeding you actually do. The 8 oz bottle of Honey B Healthy is the same lemongrass and spearmint concentrate as our top pick in a size that suits a small apiary: a package install in April, some comb drawing in May, and a fall feed-up in September will not use much of it. The 16 ounce bottle is better value per ounce and worse value if half of it is still sitting there in 2029.

Everything else matches the 16 ounce entry: label rate, syrup only, never while honey supers are on, and no health claims attached. The one place a small bottle beats a large one on function rather than economics is in a beginner's first season, where the whole point is learning what feeding does and does not accomplish. Feed a package with it, watch how fast the syrup goes down, and you will understand the category better than any product page can explain it. Our package install walkthrough covers where that fits in the first two weeks.

The buying question is bundling, not efficacy. Honey B Healthy Plus takes the lemongrass and spearmint base that makes bees work a feeder and folds in additional nutritional components, per the label. At $37.50 against $34.50 for Original, the premium is small enough that the decision comes down to how you like to manage inputs: one bottle that does several things at a fixed ratio, or separate bottles you dose independently.

All the standard rules still apply, and they are not optional: mix at the label rate, feed in syrup only, and never with honey supers on the hive, because anything you feed can end up in the honey you harvest and sell. Feeding supplements are also not a substitute for the colony having real forage; a hive on a genuine nectar flow does not want your syrup at all, and if it is ignoring a feeder in June, that is usually good news rather than a problem to solve.

Sugar and protein are two different shortages. Bees get carbohydrate from nectar and honey, and protein from pollen. When forage is short, most beekeepers reach for syrup, which fixes the energy problem and does nothing at all for the protein problem. Amino-B Booster exists for the second one: amino acids in liquid form, mixed into syrup at the label rate, delivered through a feeder the colony is already using.

The honest limitation: a liquid amino acid supplement delivers nutrition, not bulk. If a colony genuinely lacks pollen, the tool that moves the needle is a protein patty laid across the top bars, where bees can consume real quantity, which is what our pollen patty guide ranks. Think of Amino-B as the thing you add to syrup you are already feeding, and a patty as the thing you deploy when protein is the actual problem. Plenty of keepers use both in late summer, and that is a coherent program rather than redundancy.

One caution that applies to all protein feeding: patties and protein-rich feeds can attract small hive beetles, and feeding protein in a weak colony that cannot patrol it creates a beetle problem where you were trying to fix a nutrition problem. Feed what the colony can consume in a reasonable time, check under the patty when you inspect, and read our small hive beetle guide if your region has pressure.

Availability is a real feature in feeding season. When a package is arriving Saturday and your usual bottle is empty, the product you can get today wins. Little Giant's liquid bee feeding stimulant is the farm-supply option in this category, from a brand whose hive tools, brushes, and feeders turn up in most beginner kits, and at $34.99 it sits right alongside the market leader on price.

Where a stimulant sits in a sensible feeding program: the feeder is the equipment decision, covered in our bee feeder guide, the syrup ratio is the seasonal decision, roughly 1:1 by weight in spring for stimulation and 2:1 in fall for storing, and the supplement is the optional accelerant on top. Fall feeding in particular has its own rules about timing and what a colony can actually cure and cap before cold weather, which our winter feed guide and syrup feeding walkthrough handle in detail. Get the feeder and the timing right first; the supplement is the last five percent, not the first.