>Lunden (1954) showed that 10 essential amino acids (for honeybees) are always present in all pollens in about the same quantity, suggesting to me that >the large fluctuations of protein content in pollen due to seasonal variations may not be uniform among constituent amino acids.  This begs the question:  >As a consequence of the CO2 driven decrease in protein content in plant matter, do the 10 essential amino acids decline to the same extent as the non->essential ones, or not?  I went back to Loladze’s paper and found that he didn’t report on this.  I went to the Kislyak paper (goldenrod study) and they also >only looked at total protein.


I've also wondered how the different amino acids in pollen respond to seasonal variation especially weather, except I'm starting from a different assumption.  The single reference I've been able to find on the percent of amino acids indicates that not all pollens contain all the ten essentials.  The issue with my reference is that it's from Australia (The Fat Bee Skinny Bee publication) and it's risky to translate the amino acid tables in the back to plants that also grow here. I conjured up a theory that last years spring cold snap followed by the fall drought and the subsequent death of lots of colonies over winter was due in part to the loss of key pollen that when combined with others in bee bread would have completed the essential acid profile. And all of that ultimately affected the vitellogenin stores. As an academic exercise, I've tried to determine from my bloom calendar, which has historical data on species where my bees forage, if, even in normal years, they are getting a complete amino acid profile and have been unable to find data on enough of the pollens to tell.  Basically, I don't think we even have a good starting point to determine where this will go with increased atmospheric CO2.  One question I did get answered from Hill, is that if a plant can make pollen that pollen should be typical of what that plant makes in terms of the amino acid profile. 

The Fat Bee Skinny Bee .pdf 

https://beeassoc.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/somerville-1.pdf  

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