At 09:22 AM 2/8/98 -0600, you wrote: >Thanks for the fresh air, Andy. I still recall your talking about the >purity (NOT) of beekeeper collected bee pollen for human consumption and >your reasons for no longer participating in the promotion thereof. Hi Allen, & Bee Friend, I know you did not ask but this comes to mind and I must again say it, if again: Yes for many years I trapped pollen from my bee hives, I was one of the early leaders in this field, I even have an unpublished book on the subject that I may put on the Internet some day. I trapped pollen first for the information on what my bees were working and my own use to feed my own bees and later on to supply other beekeepers with pollen to feed their bees. It is one of the most enjoyable experiences I had in keeping bees. Early on I filled requests for bee collected pollen from research institutes such as were doing bee research and human research, at no cost to them and I even paid the shipping of the 30#, five gallon cans and latter on plastic buckets. I harvested, cleaned, and froze all the pollen I collected and only by accident when I misplaced a can did I find out how real super bee feed could be produced by naturally fermenting the pollen before using it, which never has been much reported by me or anyone else. (you saw it here first on the Internet) <G> I also learned how to produce wax worm silk, and wax worm parasites but that's another story. Why did I stop when I saw the price increase from $1.00 per pound I was charging to $5.00 per pound. Two things really bothered me, one was people were using pollen as a food and I knew that unlike honey that in its Natural, Organic or Pure condition is relatively safe for most people to eat with about the same numbers of people having problems as those who have problems from bee stings, but with pollen which is not and has never been a clean food and contains every bad thing that can be found in our environment the number of people who have problems when consuming it rises to levels maybe 100,000 times that of honey, mostly from allergies, and I did not want to become involved in that kind of business. This was my own choice and today pollen as a human food or food supplement is greater then it ever was and can be found in many forms in most any national retail drug store besides that which is hawked by the normal outlets for so called health foods and as far as I know NO one is being made ill or dying from eating it, but there is some Luck in everything we do today, just ask our President... People who sell pollen for human consumption and those who buy it to eat always remind me that at one time I raised big fat red worms commercially and all they ever got to eat was smart pills from my 200 doe rabbitry. These worms grew to sizes never seen in the wild, they were so sexy that I could not only sell the whole worms but I could sell their eggs by the gallon to others who wanted to start their own worm farm. I never did try to sell anybody on the idea that smart pills from rabbits would be good human food but it sure was good food for the worms. Not once did I ever have anyone buy any smart pills from me to eat so they would get the same benefits as my worms got from consuming them. Pollen is the best natural bee food I have ever found and yet I am not convinced it is even safe for human consumption. I can say for a fact research was done to grow hair on over sexed bald men and it did not change their sex drive or grow any hair. RR fed it to his horses, if he ate it himself it sure did not keep him from getting old or old timers disease, he always has been older then me and to be alive and much loved at 87 is great. I tasted my pollen often myself, and even breathed it for years and I still got cancer on the end of my noise. I once gave a 5 gallon can to a guy who begged me for it as his wife was terminal with brain cancer and she died. That ended it for me, I put my traps in the barn and they are still there. The 2nd reason I stopped also has to do with bee research (BS) and is closer to what most of us do everyday and that is the attempt to keep healthy bees by adding to their diets sugar and proteins including some pollen. When I started trapping pollen chalk brood was unknown or rare in the bees hives in the USA. Some old timers could remember seeing it back in the early 40's, but few had ever seen it, including myself and none had a problem with it. Later on at the time it was being found and becoming a problem here in the US and other places I started trapping pollen, I had NO chalk brood at the time or none I could see. I was selling pollen to the USDA for them to feed their research bees at $1.00 per pound, each year they took a few more cans and each year it took more red tape and longer to receive payment for it. It got so bad I had to sign legal forms that I was not a Red mad dog commie, that I hired all who asked for work including the mentally ill and blind, and much more. Hard to believe I had to sign a Loyalty Oath just to sell the USDA bee pollen they wanted to feed their bees and then wait six months to receive payment. Even I have limits to what I will do for my country and one year when I to this day do not know if I was ever paid for the year before's shipment of pollen I raised my price to $3.00 per pound to cover the added costs of doing business with the government.. I never sold another pound of pollen to the USDA, but even though the same laws that I must obey specifically state that the USDA will buy all farm product and more from a US source first before going off shore for their needs they chose to buy their pollen from a northern producer using an importer to cover their tails. This northern producer had a bad chalk brood problem and would grind up the mummies with the pollen and sell the resulting product that contained a very high percentage of chalk brood spores, I am talking 5-10% by weight. I did not know at the time but the pollen that I was selling the USDA and what they purchased from the north was used by more then one bee lab and of course they all broke down with chalk brood almost at once. We got a lot of chalk brood research after that as you could well understand and no information a beekeeper could use to cure it other then not feed pollen with chalk brood mummies or trapped from hives that have chalk brood. Yes we pay for that kind of common sense information everyday when we look to our regulatory scientists to do bee research and in enlightened places like the Left Coast of America we pay twice because if the University of California does not do the research work it won't work here or be permitted here until they do it. I never knowingly trapped pollen from a hive with chalk brood, and if I found a hive with it I would stop trapping it. I have seen others who were trapping pollen for human consumption that were able to clean out five gallon or more buckets of chalk brood mummies every day which does make good chicken feed or at least they will eat it. That bee outfit does not sell pollen for bee feed or even feed their own pollen, no wonder. Anyway I think those who feed pollen other then that which they know was produced from hives that did not have chalk brood are flirting with disaster of a scale that could conceivably put them out of the bee business as to this date there is no cure for chalk brood. The best pollen for feeding bees is like the best queens for re-queening them and that is what the beekeeper produced with his own hands. Some bee breeders would never trust even their own kids with picking breeder queens, most will let their wife's do the grafting if they are that lucky to have one who will do it, and I would think the same care should be done when picking the yards to trap pollen, any chalk brood in any yard should be enough to stop trapping in that yard if possible, unless you are going to sell it to the USDA Bee Labs. It is not even clear if the pollen from a hive with chalk brood needs to have the mummies to pass on the chalk brood to another hive, I suspect not but don't know the answer. Chalk brood could be like AFB spores and the numbers required to cause an infection is very high so that an occasional few thousand or million spores may not cause any symptoms. There is so much that we beekeeper know not of what we speak when it comes to the environment and bees that is basic it boggles my mind. I too look to Jerry B. to blaze some new trails into a better understanding of what we all assume is natural and may not be all so pristine. I do know that the honey from the most secluded mountain tops far removed from man, machines, and their dirt does contain detectable levels of hydro carbons and other things that we would/should not expect to be there. But then we can now find a speck of dust on a beach and no one would expect that speck to be a problem unless it is the one that triggered that cancer on the end of my noise and then I say clean up the beach.<G> Well I am going out to pick up 10-39 cent hamburger a MacDonalds, just look what they did for our President and he only eats them one at a time. I will report back if the young girls are successfully in molesting me. ttul, the OLd Drone "Where there are fruits & nuts, there are beekeepers" (c)Permission is given to copy this document in any form, or to print for any use. (w)OPINIONS are not necessarily facts. USE AT OWN RISK!