BEE-L Archives

Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

BEE-L@COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 28 Dec 1998 21:52:32 GMT+0200
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (219 lines)
> From:    Allen Dick <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Yeast - some other info
Hi All/Allen
 
Allen wrote:
 
> We'll deal with the California Spray Dry product here for now, since that
> is the only one I have found that I can afford.  It is about 50c USD per
> pound and the torula (torutein CT) that Musson was recommending turns out
> to be $5.20 CAD /kg
 
Torula yeast would be a better yeast, but as you say more expensive.
I think, judging by the name that Torula yeast is most probably a
dried or extracted form of Torula glabrata (yeast taxonomy is
confused at best - I think Torula is now classified as a Candida,
probably C.utilus). This yeast is highly digestable, has a very thin
wall and is being investigated by many research groups (C.utilus) as
an alternative protein source for cows and pigs, as it has a great
carbohydrate balance and is not as toxic as S.cerevisiae (normal
bakers yeast). It may be worth comparing the conversion ration - it
may be that the dried yeast you get may be 20% digestable, and the
torula 60% giving you a better conversion ratio for the more
expensive one, making it in effect cheaper - once again this is
conjecture though.
 
> > If grown under hyperoxygenated 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....
>
> Here's the breakdown.  Maybe you can say if this is spent and sporulated
> yeast or the oxygenated variety?
>
> Protein 39-48%
> Fat 2.3%
> Fiber 3.6%
> Ash 5.9%
> Moisture 3.7%
> pH 4-7
> Bulk Density 30-33lbs/ft3
 
The pH of 4.7 would hint that it is spent brewing yeast, or possibly
yeast from a bakers yeast supplier - I think beer has a pH of about
4.5
 
The fats one would need a breakdown of the types - next year I will
be setting up a machine here to analyse the fat/fatty acid
composition of my yeasts which I grow. Maybe then you could send a
sample and I can tell it if has the essential ones (gamma linoleic
and linolenic acids which are probably the most important aspect of
the food) These are also heat sensitive and degrade rapidly in bright
light and temperatures above 60-80C if I recall right. Should look
that up somewhere in my heap of reading material. It is also
important that some of these fats can become toxic when denatured.
 
> Minerals
> NFE 49.9
> Calcium 21
> Phosporus 10
> Magnesium .06
> Potassium 1.94
> Sodium .26
> Copper 6.0 ppm
> Iron 43.0 ppm
> Manganese 22.4 ppm
> Zinc 24.0 ppm
 
I gather that the minerals that are not pm must be mg - in which case
it is interesting to note the low sodium.
 
> Vitamins
> E 7.4 iu/lb
 
This suggests very low heat exposure - vit E is very heat sensitive.
 
> B6 14.0 mg/lb
> B12 3.9 mcg/lb
> Thiamine 16. mg/lb
> Niacin 147.0 mg/lb
> Pantothenic Acid 6.1 mg/lb
> Choline 324.0 mg/lb
> Biotin 98.0 mcg/lb
> Folic Acid .64 mg/lb
> Inositol 2078 mg/lb
> Riboflavin 10.1 mg/lb
 
The high riboflavin may damage some yeasts in bee guts (natural
yeasts - worth watching for nosema with this.) That is also a lot of
inositol - inositol is a sugar alcohol - I wonder if bees can use it?
It is used as an artifical sweetener for humans and in sweets for
diabetics, but can cause diahorrea (sp?) if too much is consumed as I
think it cannot be absorbed, hence it stays in the gut and in the
lower intestinal tract it has an osmotic presence - hence the gut
cannot absorb moisture out of the faeces and one gets the D word. I
don't know if bees have this problem. (This feeds into the reply to
Andys post below this)
 
> I gather the spray drying process is just that.  The slurry is sprayed
> from a nozzle and dries quickly at moderate temperatures.  How fast can
> yeast sporulate?
 
I think it can do it quite fast. Remember the natural environment of
many wild S.cerevisiae strains is in flowers and on fruit skins -
where they grow quickly for a few hours when the fruit is wet by rain
and they use up exuded sugars, then they sporulate as it dries and
wait for the next chance. I sporulate a similar yeast by drying and
it takes about half an hour to an hour. If this is spray drying like
they do for milk I would geuss it probably happens too fast for the
yeast to get it's act together.
 
> I don't know the drying temperature.  I haven't tried resusitating the
> yeast to see if it is active.
 
It may be worth taking a sample, I know you have a haemocytometer -
do the same count on a freshly innoculated volume, count the number
of cells, then count again after a few hours. At pH 4.8 and a
temperature of about 28C many strains of S.cerevisiae will divide
about every 4 hours. An easier route would be to let them be in a
growth media for  half an hour, then to stain them with some
lactophenol blue - this should show up dead cells as blue and live as
clear.
 
The next bit:
 
> From:    Andy Nachbaur <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Yeast - some other info
 
> >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
>
> Sounds interesting but I would ask if you would do the same with pollen and
> what value the pollen would have after "killing" all the yeast in it?
 
No - I would not heat treat pollen. I read a paper a while back by a
group from a Dutch agricultural University where they looked at
declining pollen viability and nutrition with time. I think heat
destroyed it very fast. Likewise, the natural yeast in pollen
represent a toolbox that constantly reinnoculates the bees gut
allowing it to get rid of rare sugars it cannot proccess (I would
geuss) including things like Xylose - wood sugar.
 
> The best yeast I have ever tested and used by the tons for feeding bees was
> a product made for forest products waste. It was sold here for many years
> as a food flavor enhancement for spicy foods such as potato chips. The
> trade name was Wheast and it was not so dead that I could not grown
> tremendous colonies on plywood its mother. In fact it would make it very
> dangerous to walk on one of my truck beds after several  seasons of bee
> diet delivery use as you would fall through.<G>
 
Yes - a wood digesting yeast - Xylose fermenting I am sure. I would
geuss it is now probably being used a lot in bioremediation of
paper/pulp efluent in Canada where the legislation on effluents are
becomming extremely strict. That may be an alternative source. Must
have been a humorous discovery - the plywood one!! (: >
 
> This forest product, Wheast, was discontinued and the equipment was shipped
> to SA.(South America not South Africa) Other products made from corn waste
 
Where did it go in South America - if it was discontinued in the
early eighties there is an extremely good chance it ended up in
Brazil adjacent to a very large floating paper mill that was put
there by some Japanese investor to utilise plantations of a fast
growing brazilian tree - and the effluent if turned into wheast would
have made great cattle food.
 
> As for my answer to the question on pollen the best pollen that I have ever
> feed bees was naturally fermented in closed containers in a 80+ degree f.
> room without the addition of any moisture. The resulting product would gag
> a maggot, was very dark in color, and smelled like stale beer barf but boy
> was it exciting to see what bees would do with it as far as rearing brood
> when added about 5-50% to yeast with enough sugar syrup to make a pattie. I
> am sure these diets would not be fit for human consumption and never have
> compared insect diets to anything I would put in my own month as I am sure
> some of the things bees will eat and do well on are not necessarily that
> good for us anyway.<G>
 
That is interesting!! I gather bees do this themselves, using among
other things Lactobacilli (the ones that make saur kraut - sp?-
sour). These produce vast quantities of lactic acid, and also have a
veritbale toolbox of little enzymes, many of which would even be able
to crack open pollen.
 
> better if allowed to work which is not new information as most should
> realize by now that bees do not eat fresh pollen or even fresh stored
> pollen but eat a fermented product made from pollen some call be bread.
> They do this by adding moisture to the pollen at warm hive temperatures and
> then sucking that moisture with the dissolved pollen up into their bodies.
> You can tell which pollen cells are being consumed in the hive by looking
> for this moisture layer on top of the stored pollen. Bees will even rob
 
I have noticed this - those cells also taste sweet, whereas the
others taste powdery, so there is a chance the bees innoculate it, or
add sugar to make the pollen germinate (many pollens germinate in the
presence of funny sugars like trehalose). Germinated pollen could
then be digested with normal lipid digesting, or protein digesting
enzymes (they would just eat through the pollen tube and release all
the nutrient through the hole)
 
> Dusty and we were losing much of our wealth to pesticides. One thing I
> learned and have said before was they all added TANG to their diets and did
> not know why scientifically but said it was necessary. Maybe it had
 
What is TANG?
 
 
Anyhow - this is interesting stuff. I need to read up a bit and put
in some more.
 
Keep well
 
Garth
Garth Cambray           Camdini Apiaries
15 Park Road
Grahamstown             Apis mellifera capensis
6139 South Africa
 
Time = Honey

ATOM RSS1 RSS2