Pollen Sub

So, now were all beavering away inside, waiting for spring, can anyone tell me more about Pollen substitute. I fancy mixing a load for my hives to compare, or at least, try to compare if any difference in spring build up, or if we get a dreaded cold snap and brood rearing shuts down at the very wrong time!!
I Know it has a base of brewers years, Soya (or protein based flour) and Sugar and others put other things in, in their "secret formulas".
I have never fed pollen sub but it might be necessary, so, can anybody offer any sensible advice on their experiences, recipes and cheapest places to get ingredients from, at reasonable prices!!

Don't suppose you have Holland & Barratt healthfood shops over there but expect any health product shop will have most of what you would need. I got mine from H&B but what I made wasn't appreciated so the remainder of ingredients have lain unused for about 6 years. Yours to collect?

Plenty of honey said:

So, now were all beavering away inside, waiting for spring, can anyone tell me more about Pollen substitute. I fancy mixing a load for my hives to compare, or at least, try to compare if any difference in spring build up,!!

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I have fed 25 years my hives with pollen or with pollen patties. I have used yeast+soya+pollen mixture over 10 years.

When heating big hives with terrarium heater and feeding protein patty, spring build up has been 3 fold. Small hives become often sick. They get chalkbrood.

IT took several years that feeding went well. When I have given advices for feeding, guys have changes at once the recipe and then they write that it does not work. And of course, there has been a herd of village dogs around whipping their jaws. It has been a hard work to develope, how the feeding goes well.

Essential is warm polyhives too in build up.


Very essential in patty recipe is irradiated pollen. And that is difficult to get from Europe.

Essential is too the softnes and moisture of patty. IT is difficult to handle. But if patty is hard, bees cannot chew it with jaws.

99% of beekeepers are such opinion, that sugar feeding helps in build up, but only 1% is such opinion, that patty feeding is usefull. That is controversy to researched facts. Fact is, that sugar feeding does not help in brood rearing. When a hive rear one frame of brood, it needs one frame of pollen. One box brood needs one box pollen.

If hive does not enough pollen, bees eate part of larvae off. That is one point, how patty works, when there is short of pollen during bad weathers.

There is lots of humbug in this area. One product has 97% sugar and 3% pollen, and price 4-6 fold compared to sugar. Beekeepers feel, that it is usefull.

Actually pollen protein optimum is 23%. Willow has about 15% protein, and that is why bees want to eate patty with willow pollen.

What I have seen, a swarm forage guite small amount of pollen, but it eates patty in the middle of summer.


This forum is full of writings.

. nearest place to get irradiated pollen is in Australia. Last spring I did not feed hives with patty. Spring was rainy and cold and bees could not go to forage to willows. It was sad to see, how difficult the brood rearing was.

Next spring I buy pollen from Australia, what ever it costs.

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" I do not use patty feeding" is needless to say, because 90% of beekeepers have never tried it.

Needless to say that "we have always pollen in nature". Yes you have, but there are often bad weeks when bees cannot go onto flowers. In cold weather and in cold wind bees cannot fly far.

When I started pollen feeding is that farmers have cut almost all willows around my cottage. Willow is their enemy in my village. EU officers encourage farmers to destroy willows. Then 10 km to some direction and willows may grow freely.

I have too much hives in my yard. There is not enough pollen at the distance of 1 km.

In common nature willow feeds a huge amouth of wild insects in early spring. It gives sugar and protein to animals.

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Finman said:

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" I do not use patty feeding" is needless to say, because 90% of beekeepers have never tried it.

Needless to say that "we have always pollen in nature". Yes you have, but there are often bad weeks when bees cannot go onto flowers. In cold weather and in cold wind bees cannot fly far.

When I started pollen feeding is that farmers have cut almost all willows around my cottage. Willow is their enemy in my village. EU officers encourage farmers to destroy willows. Then 10 km to some direction and willows may grow freely.

I have too much hives in my yard. There is not enough pollen at the distance of 1 km.

In common nature willow feeds a huge amouth of wild insects in early spring. It gives sugar and protein to animals.

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Thats interesting thanks Finman, we have a lot of willow pollen here, that is the main source of our very early pollen supply. Its usually finished in mid to end of march (depending upon the spring) and its then i was considering pollen sub.
What is you actual recipe please Finnman?

Arfermo said:

Don't suppose you have Holland & Barratt healthfood shops over there but expect any health product shop will have most of what you would need. I got mine from H&B but what I made wasn't appreciated so the remainder of ingredients have lain unused for about 6 years. Yours to collect?

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Thanks Arfermo, yes have Holland and Barret in Jersey. I am over there from next week, for xmas (R and R with no kids !!), will look for ingredients there. thanks for that!!!

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Health product stuff prices are 10 fold compared to normal food stuffs. And pollen is not irradiated.

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Here is my recommendation

Pollen patty recipe

2 kg dry yeast
1 kg soya flour. ( Fatty flour is OK) Flour must be fine grind.
1 kg irradiated pollen

4 kg sugar as 2:1 warm syrup
2-3 dl rape oil (bees did not accept olive oil)
one multivitamin pill
one multi B-vitamin pill
one mangesium pill

30% of sugar should be fructose. It takes moisture from hive air and keeps
patty soft.
Date fruits are cheaper than fructose and bees seems to love it. . Put date into hot water that it softens.

The colony eates 0,5 - 1,0 kg paty/ week. I feed them 7 weeks = total 3-5 kg/hive.

The moisture of patty is very important that bees eate it.

Keep the mixture warm when you mix it. Put the mixture in small 3 litre plastic doses that you may warm it up in micro wave oven.

Roll the patty to 1 thick layear between grease paper and put it over the top frames. Load the whole upper space with patty. It lasts one week to eate.

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Skimmed milk is often in recipes, but it has 50% lactose, which bees cannot use. Price is high. Yeast is better.

If you use much soya, it hardens easily the patty.

You get dry yeast from horse forage supplier. Perhaps 3€/kg.

I have used soya flour Hamlet Protein HP 100. It is meant to animal mother milk substituent.
http://hamletprotein.com/us/distributors/europe

France

HAMLET PROTEIN A/S
P.O. Box 130
Saturnvej 51
8700 Horsens
Denmark

Mobile: + 31 6 22 57 57 23
Head Office: + 45 75 63 10 20
Fax: + 45 75 63 10 25
E-mail: [email protected]

Contact person: Area Sales Manager Fons Hegeman

Thanks `Finman, very helpful. If you can't get actual pollen, (irradiated or not) will bees eat patties without a certain amount of natural pollen in them? Ive seen about putting wax paper on top of the patty, to help against them loosing moisture, while the bees eat away the patty from underneath! , thanks. Jersey also has a lot of horses , so will now look there for ingredients!!

Plenty of honey said:

Thanks `Finman, very helpful. If you can't get actual pollen, (irradiated or not) will bees eat patties without a certain amount of natural pollen in them?

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No. It does not work.

.Optimum pollen amount is 20%
When I have used 5%, half of hives did not eate it.

I have used 7 years old pollen and it worked normally. That is funny thing.

It is quite a big work to make patty and deliver it into hives. It is not usefull, if bees do not eate it enough.
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My friend bought pollen last spring from Australia.
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One of the reasons that bees are much more likely to consume Pollen supplement rather than pollen substitutes is that Pollen in the supplement provides a chemical that makes the bees want to eat it. This phagostimulant has been isolated and found to be
Octadeca trans 2 cis 9 trans 12 trienoic acid (try saying that after a few pints!)

Please be careful trying to mix your own "kitchen sink" supplements. At the moment there is NOT a product available that I would call a pollen substitute, although one is quite close.

Doing so with the range of ingredients easily available to Mr average beekeeper will do more harm than good and can easily cause your colony to at best under perform or at worst fail.

Correctly balancing a supplement is a skilled job and should only be done by professionals who have the correct training. Bees will readily consume a correctly formulated supplement that does not contain any pollen at a similar or even higher rate than pollen.

And yes I hear the cries of we've been doing it for years with no ill effects....

sipa said:

Please be careful trying to mix your own "kitchen sink" supplements. At the moment there is NOT a product available that I would call a pollen substitute, although one is quite close.

Doing so with the range of ingredients easily available to Mr average beekeeper will do more harm than good and can easily cause your colony to at best under perform or at worst fail.

Correctly balancing a supplement is a skilled job and should only be done by professionals who have the correct training. Bees will readily consume a correctly formulated supplement that does not contain any pollen at a similar or even higher rate than pollen.

And yes I hear the cries of we've been doing it for years with no ill effects....

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I wonder what is that talking?
By professionals... who are they?
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Are you selling some product?

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Sipa wrote in May 2014:

2nd May 2014, 06:13 PM
I'm not pointing any fingers here, but..

This is part of the problem, a general lack of understanding regarding nutrition in general and in bees especially.

If you use the soya flour as used in pig, poultry, beef, dairy sheep diets then you are feeding a material that contains for example, sugars that are toxic to bees eg. rafinose and stachyhose. There are other toxins too.

Other species are not affected by those sugars in the same way as bees.

I know lots of people feed it, with no APPARANT effects, but the underlying effects and stress is significant.

As you know Finnman, Soya Isolate is safe, this is different to soya meal/flour 2nd May 2014, 06:13 PM
I'm not pointing any fingers here, but..

This is part of the problem, a general lack of understanding regarding nutrition in general and in bees especially.

If you use the soya flour as used in pig, poultry, beef, dairy sheep diets then you are feeding a material that contains for example, sugars that are toxic to bees eg. rafinose and stachyhose. There are other toxins too.

Other species are not affected by those sugars in the same way as bees.

I know lots of people feed it, with no APPARANT effects, but the underlying effects and stress is significant.

As you know Finnman, Soya Isolate is safe, this is different to soya meal/flour

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I do not know, from where you get those ideas, but you write from information.

Normal soya flour of super market to human consumption with 20% fat is good to bees.
Normal forage to animals is too coarse. Bees cannot eate it. They drop it onto floor.

I have never used soya isolate even if I have fed 13 years soya to bees.
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sipa said:

At the moment there is NOT a product available that I would call a pollen substitute, although one is quite close.

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What product is quite close then Sipa, for those wishing to buy rather than make?

Also having Googled bee pollen substitute just now, it seems Mann Lake in the US, and I would assume the UK, put a very good case forward for their pollen substitute being fit for purpose?

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Should I order 100 - 150 kg patty from USA? .... No. I do it myself as before.

I pour stuffs to dough machine and that is that.

http://hornsby-beekeeping.com/bee-feeding/

10 kg that irradiated pollen and I get 100 kg very palatable patty.
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Finman said:

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Should I order 100 - 150 kg patty from USA? .... No. I do it myself as before.

I pour stuffs to dough machine and that is that.

http://hornsby-beekeeping.com/bee-feeding/

10 kg that irradiated pollen and I get 100 kg very palatable patty.
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I don't disagree with you Finman, as making the patties does have its place. I was just trying to get Sipa to clarify the point made so that beekeepers with only a small number of hives, or ones not wanting to make patties, have options - as it seems Sipa knows about the stuff.

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We have discussed many times in this forum about pollen patties. Result has been that we cannot get irradiated pollen from Europe.

Next difficulty is that good patty stuff has not been delivered in Europe.

Most popular is such which has 3% pollen. So practically not at all protein.

Last year I tried patty, which had no pollen. I gove up from feeding that because amount what bees ate it, was practically zero.

I have tried FeedBee, but bees ate only half amount of that what I have fed my earlier patty. And the amount of patty is the key, how much patty makes brood.
We already know that yeast and soya are proper food to bees, but how to make bees to eate them.

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