> Recent work by Dave de Jong, et al, shows that pollen may not be the best 
> food for bees after all. It requires extensive processing on their part to 
> make it digestible. Like termites, they require gut flora to convert 
> indigestible material into something they can use. Obviously, if the 
> protein in the food was predigested it could save them a lot of wear and 
> tear and possibly lead to improved health, depending on the composition of 
> the supplement.

Thanks for that Peter.  Good stuff!

One question and one comment:

Question: Do bees ever eat fresh pollen or does it have to be made into bee 
bread first?

Comment: Everyone, it seems, looks at the protein content in pollen and 
supplements, and, noting reports that that higher-protein pollens are 
generally much more efficacious than lower-protein pollens, extrapolate that 
observation to supplements.

I have asked a number of noted experts the following question and never 
received a clear answer, although I have seen he gears turning...  Maybe 
some day...

Here is the question:
"If a feed has high protein, it necessarily follows that it contains lower 
amounts of non-protein constituents, and given that higher-protein pollens 
are reported in general to be more efficacious than lower-protein feeds, and 
since it follows that lower-protein feeds necessarily contain greater 
amounts of non-protein constituents, is it not reasonable to wonder if the 
reason for the difference is *not the percentage of protein*, but the nature 
and amount of the non-protein constituents that bees much consume in order 
to obtain sufficient protein?"

If the non-protein constituents are the problem, should we not focus our 
attention on them and not on the protein percentage.

It seems intuitive to me that if water and sugar are responsible for 
lowering the protein level of the end feed, that should not really have much 
influence on the effectiveness of the feed, particularly in contrast to a 
case where the non-protein constituent is comprised of cellulose, ash, 
esters, indigestible sugars and other possible factors, so we should be 
ignoring the sugar and water and looking at the protein levels of the 
non-sugar and non-water ingredients. 

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