From: randy oliver <[log in to unmask]>

>As Medhat said, not directly fed to larvae (I feel that most of the bee
books have it wrong), but first transformed to jelly, similar in the way
that a cow transforms alfalfa into milk.

Randy, I agree with you 100%.  As one reads through the literature (both books and scientific papers), one gets the impression that even the "experts" are unsure of what is going on.  Most of the sources at least imply that pollen is actually fed to larvae at some point before capping.

This is an interesting study (but may be influenced by the poor nutrition that corn pollen provides and/or by the size of the colonies and that they had no stored pollen available to them):
http://www.culturaapicola.com.ar/apuntes/revistaselectronicas/apidologie/35-3/06.pdf
Fully grown worker bee larvae were found to contain between 1720 and 2310 maize pollen grains
in their gut before defecation, corresponding to 1.52–2.04 mg of pollen consumed per larva. On average,
74.5% of pollen grains were completely digested while 23.3% were partially digested and 2.2% remained
undigested. Our data indicate that the contribution of the protein by directly feeding larvae with pollen is
less than 5% in relation to the total amount of protein necessary for complete larval development.

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