At 07:16 AM 8/28/97 -0600, Allen Dick wrote:
>> "Soy" flower is somewhat of a sacred cow when it comes to bee feed
>> nothing bad I can say about it will go unanswered by it proponents. ("It
>> must be good as so and so sells diets with it in it")
>
>Now, Andy, I don't mean no disrespect, but howcum you are so sure of this?
>I'm not arguing with you -- and I am really interested in the truth of this
>cause it's costing me money not to know what my bees really really need,
>but I wonder on exactly what experience you base this strong assertion.
 
I think you answered it for me, but if it works for you, use it as long as
your are using yeast with it. From my experience for a fact I could not
rear bees on soy flower of any kind, type, or brand in a beehive that does
not contain pollen or have pollen coming in, but the bees will collect it
and sometimes even put it in the hive. If you put enough sugar in it it
will disappear, but you can do that with chopped up newspaper. But this is
only my experience and what can be found in the literature in feeding tests
done by others may be different. I would not ever say it could not be
different for others the only thing I can say for sure is I don't use soy
flower in any of my own bee diets because it did not add anything but cost
to them for me.
 
Its only use would be to cut a diet that had a more expensive protein, or
maybe one that, let us say was a little hot in N. It would not increase the
amount of brood reared for each pound fed without some outside help as above.
 
>> Without other proteins or natural pollen stored or coming into the hive
>> it is of no value to honeybees.
 
>Can you assure us that yeasts do work under such conditions?
 
100% Guarantee it is better then soy flower alone and bee feed with soy
flower added having done some work myself with bulk bees and a queens
during the winter here in Los Banos that is ideal for this type of test as
it is warm enough to rear brood without having it froze back but too foggy
and overcast for bees to fly other then a hour or a day now and then to
make a nature trip to the facilities in the sky that bees use.
 
Nothing is more exciting then opening a hive in the middle of winter and
finding healthy brood wall to wall because of your own inputs. Its a power
trip when anyone can fool Mother Nature that way. Is this type of feed lot
feeding of any value?, not really, other then knowing it can be done. Like
the local beekeepers would ask "what value is a super hive of bees that is
going to swarm the first good day in February?" or "a hive that needs a
young queen before they are normally available" (Hawaii excluded). It is,
in fact becomes a problem if you have several thousand box's of them ready
to leave, but a problem that I believe I could find a solution for and
would have liked to have and only the fact that the cost of the inputs were
grater then the value of the end results has kept feed lot beekeeping from
being a reality.
But we can increase or extend the fall brood cycle, and start the spring one
with supplemental feeding and some do in this area with excellent results.
 
>>  The ideal protein diet would be one that could be fed as a liquid and
>> that was the one that I was/am looking for. (Honeybees consume only
>> liquids.)
 
>I find this pretty fascinating, since every beekeeper "knows" that bees eat
>pollen.  Many know that it is made into bee bread.  Now the exact process
>is hard to see, and little described.  And as you point out they have to
>suck whatever they eat up a straw, so bread may not be the best description
>of what they eat.
 
In fact most every beekeeper has seen the process but few have recognized
it as that. If next time you are in a hive look for the pollen cells
closest to the brood combs or in it and you will notice that some have what
looks like a film or layer of liquid over it, this is the pollen the bees
are consuming and it has been prepared for their use by lignification by
other bees. If you look closer you will be amazed that what you see is not
homogeneous and really can be fractions of food materials and varies from
food cell to food cell. My own theory on this is that the bottom layer is
the least nutritious but that's just a guess. That bottom layer would
contain the most bee bread.<G>
 
How did I get so smart, well its a long story about some old bee guy's I
loved from the USDA with 50+ years field experience each as beekeepers and
scientists who never saw it all and continued to look. Frank and Sam were
their name and they stopped by one day in the winter to see some special
bees I had that flew in the winter here and did other wonderful things not
normally seen in our local bees.
 
The weather was our normal foggy overcast with only a degree or two between
high and low in the 50 degree f. range. The bees cooperated and were not
only flying when they arrived but were up to one of their tricks and that
was collecting pollen for dead hives and using it to rear brood in their
own hives. We all were very experienced bee observers and we all saw
something for the first time, or at least two of us did as if I had not
seen it earlier and followed the process I would have not been able to show
others.<G> I am sure the reason this is not seen more often is that the
humidity has to be just right and normally inside a dead hive it would not
be and when it is natural pollen is available. Anyway those special bees
capped a friendship of many years and a trip to Washington to visit with
Frank and see the old Senator's
ball game, and input in a book by Sam on pollination. Both men are now
working bees in heaven I am sure as I believe that for beekeepers even in
heaven there can be no real vacations during the bee season and know that
GOD does not allow plastic flowers of any kind there so it got to be tall
clover for the old beekeepers who make the grade.
 
>I guess we can assume that the conversion process from fresh pollen can't
>take too long, since the bees start brood rearing almost as soon as the
>pollen is in the door -- or do they?
 
Part of the old never ending chicken and egg story. Brood rearing will
start without pollen income on sugar or nectar income, at the least eggs
will be laid. How far that brood develops depends on pollen income...
 
Bees can feed brood for some time without pollen it if they were reared on
a good natural balanced diet the fall before, fat bees you might say, but
the conditions for making bee bread and rearing brood are the same
conditions as for the natural fermation process so if the cluster is warm
enough which in many areas is the coldest part of the winter broodrearing
will start as they heat up naturally by consuming more honey then those say
in central California 's interiour valley. Now bees reared under such
conditions or any conditions that are not almost ideal are reported to have
defects such as a shorter life span and lack of ability to feed brood so if
that is the only bees you have left in your hive when things start to open
up in the field they end up as the dink's or dead outs. Anyone can see
broodrearing is a very complex issue and feed income, hive temperatures,
age of the bees, and many other factors are present. Its no real wonder
that such a large percentage of hives that die each season do, and how one
year can be more disastrous then another, but its been that way for as far
back as bee yard records go, well maybe, modern bee yard records as I am
not sure those cave painting were morning the loss of honeybees or just
predicting it.
 
IMHO, not necessarily the way it is, but maybe just the way I see it. Some
talk about the order of things in nature, what I have seen is the success
of the disorder and variability in the nature of bees.
 
ttul, the OLd Drone