Honey
Please do not use honey in your WAM session. Golden syrup or any syrup is a good replacement for us but not for the bees!
Bees are so very clever, special and important to our world. You may have read about colony collapse and the threat to our bees worldwide. Lets make sure we do not contribute to that by pouring the bees own food over our heads when plenty of other things are just as good.
We are replacing the bees honey with a glucose substitute that just doesn't nourish the bees as thoroughly and affords them no immune protection - this is a factor that leads to colony collapse. See the paragraph and sources below, particularly the scientific paper. Thanks
"For eons of time the honey bees have been gathering nectar, mixing it with their own special enzymes, and placing it in the wax cells. The bees create a draft through the hive by flapping their wings in unison to evaporate the moisture from the nectar until it thickens to approximately 18% moisture. During this process the enzymes continue to work and when the bees decide the honey is ripe, they cap it. Capping is simply when the bees cover the cell with wax to seal off their special winter food. The honey is an amazing food that will last indefinitely.
There is another process taking place in the bee hive that few people know about. When the bees bring in pollen they also add enzymes that pickle or ferment the pollen. This pickled pollen is called “bee bread” This bee bread is even more nutritious for the bees because they can assimilate it better. There have been over 8,000 different micro organisms recorded living in the bee bread. It is a fine tuned and balanced world of little bugs that I liken to the microorganisms and flora living in our intestines. We simply could not live without them, and neither can the bees.
People will argue that sugar is sugar and that it is the same thing to the bees as honey. However refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) are not honey. They have a different PH and they lack the enzymes.
When you change the PH in a bee hive, it affects the finely balanced world of the little bugs, and weakens the colony. When they track pesticides and fungicides into the hive with their little feet, the life within the bee bread is affected"
Sources:
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/22/8842.abstract
http://grist.org/food/entomologists-stop-feeding-corn-syrup-to-honeybees-duh/
http://www.beeculture.com/a-closer-look-feeding-sugar-syruphmi/
http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/feeding-refined-sugar-to-honey-bees