Stan Sandler wrote:
>
> 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.It got so hot and dry last summer that the corn died or did not make
ears here in Central Western Pennsylvania.  Colonies fed bee pro patties
made lots of honey and extra brood!!! Other colonies no patties no
honey.