In humans we have clinical professionals and organizations who have studied nutrition for decades. I would be shocked to find that bees and people have the same requirements. But, in all probability some of the work of Stan Dudrick, MD and The American Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN) provides a template for discovery of the paradigm of Api’s requirements.

We know that there are essential, semi essential and nonessential Amino Acids. The nonessentials we can make in our organelles out of components. The semi’s are predicated on disease state or growth stage. The essentials are non substitutable.

We know that the body requires sugar, fat, protein, vitamins and trace elements.

We know that bees have different transport and process mechanisms.

We are concerned with the enteral (by mouth) type of feeding. No one is going to hook a bee up to an IV (parenteral).

I would like to see a good complete pollen, like almond pollen, assayed and compared to a known poor pollen.

Typically simple and comparatively inexpensive chromatography would likely suffice.

My intuition leads me to think that sugars are not the weak link. Too much is known of sugar, the variation and complexity is not great. But proteins and fat requirements seem likely areas for scrutiny. 

Right now I am overwhelmed with a 112 year old farm house, stenosis and adeno carcinoma. I am well now but somewhat debilitated and swamped with work. I just got a new water line covered yesterday after two two day periods of frozen waterless days. 

Someday I would like to explore pollen subs. Today I can only hope that some university type might examine the trails blazed by others.

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