Hi Allen/All
 
Allen, I enjoyed reading your stuff about yeast, as did I enjoy your
bit Andy.
 
Some info about yeast - Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Which I gather is
the one you would be buying - also sometimes called S.carlsburgensis,
S.pastorianus and a few others) is a very versatile and tough yeast.
 
If grown under hyperoxygenater conditions (IE not in the bottom of a
beer fermentor) it is very rich in a number of fats, proteins and
other nutrients which we can digest. As time goes by if it is used in
anaerobic conditions (no oxygen) it begins to run low on nutrients
that it needs for growth, but which it needs oxygen to synthesize.
Commercial brewers usually save yeast which becomes 'stuck' by
aerating it a few time - but with time it becomes so pathetec that it
is turfed - usually to a yeast extract plant (here it goes to a
factory that makes stuff called Marmite -  a black paste that your
smear on bread if you want to die of kidney failure oneday).
 
Now - if one takes such yeast and dries it a a low temperature - up
to about 40C (probably about 110F) the yeast will spurulate if it can
- brewing yeast usually can - this means it will form a thing called
a tetrad - if you look at it under magnification (1000X) you can see
a number of balls, sometimes walls depending on the strain. Nothing
you can possibly do will ever release any nutrients from this thing -
it is the biolgocial equicalent of a bomb shelter - temperature
tolerant, enzyme resistant, acid resistant, alkali resistant, it is a
waste of deigestible matter and will give your bees a sore stomach.
 
Hence, my advice to a beekeeper, which is probably dangerous advice
as it is practically untested (I have fed brewing yeast to my bees
and they were there two weeks later) would be to go to the local
brewery and get their spent yeast - find some way of heating it to
80C for twenty minutes - which will kill it and then feed it directly
to the bees together with a bit of sugar - this is a highly
nutritious, easily degestable sort of  thing  - and because it has
not been heated to about 95C most of the fats and vitamins will be OK
still - this is similar to pollen - I am sure cooked pollen would be
bad for bees.
 
(As an aside, South African Breweries - the 4th largest in the world
- recently had a problem at their Prospecton Plant in Durban where
their yeast disposer had some technical hitch and was not able to get
rid of the yeast - it cost them about R10 000 000 to dispose of the
waste yeast - in SA terms, as far as buying power here goes that
would be equivalent to US$7 000 000! in the US)
 
 Any ideas?
 
Keep well
 
Garth
 
Garth Cambray           Camdini Apiaries
15 Park Road
Grahamstown             Apis mellifera capensis
6139
South Africa
 
Time = Honey
 
The Universe is not here right now, if you would like
to leave a message, leave your name and number after
the long silence and it will get back to you as soon
as possible.