On the subject of bee diets, which I agree makes an important thread that I
enjoy on this list:
 
I have asked several times now, and still have never received a reply that I
felt had some experimental or nutritional arguments  --
 
"Which is better, full fat or defatted soya flour for the bee's nutrition?"
 
Which do you have a pallet of Allen?
 
Here is what Trevor Weatherhead wrote in August:
 
>Another way is to make patties with sugar syrup and feed it in the brood
>chamber.  If making patties, you can add extras such as de-fatted soya
>flour,  torula yeast or brewer's yeast to make the pollen go further.
 
What I know from my own experience is:
 
-I can buy defatted soya flour for half the cost of full fat.
-If open feeding then the full fat doesn't blow away as easily and helps to
keep the brewer's yeast in place too.
-If you eat insect larva, such as bee larvae or some delicious wichitty
(sp?) grubs you will soon notice from your greasy lips that they have an
extremely high fat content.
 
What I have found in my twenty five year old "Hive and Honeybee":
 
"Very little is known about the nutritional need for fats in honeybees."
 
"The incorporation of corn oil in the basic bee diet (Haydak and Dietz,
1965), did not result in increases in brood rearing activity, hypopharyngeal
gland development, or the average dry weight of emerging bees reared on the
test diet.  It was concluded that adult honey bees do not require
supplementary lipids.  The incorporation of phospholipids in a basic diet
was found to inhibit feeding by honey bees (Robinson and Nation, 1968)."
 
Another discussion noted that bees can manufacture fats needed to make wax
from simple sugars.  (Chalk up another wonderful feature of our little
friends!)  BUT, we can make sterols (such as cholesterol) from other
materials, while "many insects" cannot.  Both we and the insects NEED some
sterols.  (I always KNEW butter was good for you.  It TASTES good for you.
Support your local dairy farmers and their nice bee pasture by going back to
it if you ever stopped.  End of rant.  Sorry)  Since the bees cannot make
cholesterol (24-methylene cholesterol is their major sterol) they have to
obtain it in their diet.  It *IS* found in pollen and royal jelly.
 
I would very much like to hear more about this, especially any more recent
work on the subject.  I know when feeding my dairy cows or calves, fat is an
important dietary constituent.  A calf on a high fat milk replacer does a
lot better than one on a low fat.