Hi All On the bee feed topic - I find this really interesting. If we consider a pollen grain it is a hard husk that is usually yellow with a small haploid plant inside and some energy stores to help this little plant germinate and grow it's pollen tupe down the anther into the ovary of the female plant and deliver a sperm cell or two to it. The husk or endosperm or whatever it's name is is undigested by bees - those little yellow splats that land on your car, window, honeybottles etc and are a pain to remove are proof of that. But bees get nutrition out of the pollen somehow. My theory - they wet the pollen and it germinates. Pollen will not germinate unless it is stimulated by certain sugars and other things usually only found on flower tips. Do bees gather such sugars??? I am sure. So if they spit on the pollen it should germinate.(Has anybody ever noticed how pollen from a comb is sweeter than pollen from the landing board??) The pollen tube will grow out and give a small thin film of nutrients. If bees eat this they should be able to digest the now released proteins and nucleic acids in the germinating pollen granule. (Andy mentioned a few months back about the film of water being important.) (A bit like malting the pollen!!) Yeast would in theory be a problem for bees to digest as it is quite tough, but it has a cell wall - fungi and plants have a similar cell wall, so if a bee can digest a pollen tube it can theoretical digest a yeast cell. Yeast cells are also a biological toolbox full of fancy enzymes that can probably hydrolyse all sorts of things out of fancy chemicals like soy proteins and carbohydrates. It also has quite a high DNA/ RNA content which I would think would be useful for a queen trying to produce 2000-3000 eggs a day. Hope this is not too far of the mark! Keep well Garth --- Garth Cambray Camdini Apiaries 15 Park Road Apis melifera capensis Grahamstown 800mm annual precipitation 6139 Eastern Cape South Africa Phone 27-0461-311663 On holiday for a few months Rhodes University Which means: working with bees 15 hours a day! Interests: Fliis and bees Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this post in no way reflect those of Rhodes University.