> I use fresh pollen in cell builders. You can fill a comb with pollen by 
> working it into the comb with your fingers until well packed...you can 
> pack two heaping double hands full into a comb. They certainly do eat it, 
> and grow nice cells

I guess I knew that, and was just getting confused by all the talk about the 
magic of bee bread and how special it is, yada, yada....

We always kept patties of pure bee pollen pellets mixed with sugar and water 
on all our queen rearing colonies especially when we were pushing the 
envelope in April/May.

We used trapped pollen, and did not use supplements/substitutes due to Steve 
Tabor's comments in his queen rearing book.   A justified avoidance?  I 
don't know.  Like most if not all beekeepers, I hear things, and even what 
could prove to be a false rumour tends to affect decisions.

I usually am somewhat impervious to such unexplained prohibitions, but queen 
rearing was too important to chance, especially when the caveat was from 
such a respected source.  Nonetheless, I know of numerous queen raiser who 
use supplements.

So, I guess the next question us that, seeing as most of the pollen bees eat 
during active brood rearing when pollen is coming in has been recently 
gathered and not processed, what is so special about bee bread?

Is bee bread better or worse nutritionally than fresh pollen?  The same?

My understand has always been that the primary difference is that bee bread 
is to fresh pollen as 'preserves' are to fresh produce.

Great when fresh is not available, but never quite as good as fresh.

Much better than nothing. 

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