Hi All I have not as yet worked out an easy way to reply to individual postings within Bee-l best of bee things without blocking and copying and deleting till I burn out the key, so will reply here: Why are beekeepers good people: They have as their role models bees, who within one hive are very co-operative and do things without direct benefit to themselves. EG a worker lives for no reason other than to help it's mother reproduce. (A bit like a nun going round the world and setting up missionaries so other people have better lives and more kids) Secondly bee Bread Pollen is very inert with an inert layer on the outside. This is yellow. Bee droppings are yellow. ie the pollen coat is probably not digested by the bees. Pollen germinates when it lands on a flower and sends out a pollen tubule. This also can happen in the human nose (leading to hayfever). When this happens the nutrients in the pollen are mobilised and injected into the flower or your nose. If the bee germinates the pollen it may extract the nutrients through the pore that opens in the pollen tubule. This would mean that bee bread would be a bit like malted barley used in brewing. Yeasts cannot use barley starch so we germinate the seeds so they get ready to start growing and produce enzymes that release all the stored proteins and carbohydrates in the seed. So, this would mean that bees may not be able to digest proteins very much at all, but instead use the pollens natural enzymes to do the job. This would make sense considering the huge variety in pollen proteins and how difficult it would be to get the enzymes into the particles. As a result bees would not be able to use ground up soya, but would be able to use brewers yeast, as their antimicrobial enzymes would digets the yeast releasing their nutrients? This is all complete conjecture, based on the fact that I am just at present studying the malting proccess and it seems similar to what I have seen bees doing. On the censorship thread: If it offends one, your defences against what bug you and what doesnt are not much good. Living in a higly offensive society (eg South Africa where one has about twenty five different cultures all with different ideas of what is offensive, learning to ignore is best. ) Keep well Garth --- Garth Cambray Kamdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Apis melifera capensis Grahamstown 800ml annual precipitation 6139 Eastern Cape South Africa Phone 27-0461-311663 3rd year Biochemistry/Microbiology Rhodes University In general, generalisations are bad. Interests: Flii's and Bees.