Animal protein for bees?

[TooBee...]

The subject of giving bees animal proteins, specifically egg and milk indirectly came up in another Thread,
https://beekeepingforum.co.uk/showpost.php?p=659949&postcount=5
and I have been meaning to ask what the members opinions of it is.

Specifically your experiences or what you have heard, filtered with common sense. Scientific Research is obviously best...

I am intuitively against it, although difficult to put it into words beyond, "it's not natural" but then neither is giving them refined sugar, or "bees don't eat animal protein", but then they don't eat soya or brewers yeast either ... so you see I am able to somewhat argue against myself, so I was wondering what you all thought?

I have come across old recipes here in Ireland of feeding bees milk and syrup mix, and also read some more commercially orientated beekeepers (on the continent) giving the bees dried milk and egg yolk in pollen subs.

 

[Finman]

.
Best protein sources are soya and dry yeast . Then mixture needs irradiated pollen about 20% out of protein, otherwise bees do not eate yeast or soya.

First comparative laboratory tests were made 1977 in USA.

Dried milk has 50% lactose, and bees cannot use it. And that is very expencive material compared to yeast.
.
This issue is very well documented. But internet is full of all kind of recipes, what bees do not eate.

Best quality dry yeast is about 3€/kg. It has 60% protein.

Soya is special, because its aminoacid content is near animal proteins.
.

 

[Finman]

, filtered with common sense. Scientific Research is obviously best...

I am intuitively against it, although difficult to put it into words beyond, "it's not natural" .

This issue has nothing to do with "common sense". It has been all researched.

Common sense: you put yeast and sugar into a beehive, and quess what happens....

This issue has handled in this forum quite many times.

 

[alfazer]

Sometimes I bring a bucket of wet seaweed back from the shore and my bees seem to love it. Not sure what they get from it but I believe there might be some protein value.

Nothing to do with eggs and milk, but just thought I'd share that.

 

[Murox]

Bees do use salt and probably other stuff too, they seem to have a use for fresh animal dung/urine as well.

 

[TooBee...]

Bees do use salt and probably other stuff too, they seem to have a use for fresh animal dung/urine as well.

I've heard that's the reason why honey shouldn't be fed to infants?

 

[Beefriendly]

I've heard that's the reason why honey shouldn't be fed to infants?

Nope, you'll find the possibility of Infant Botulism is why you shouldn't feed honey to babies under 1 year old.
Very low risk, but there have been a few cases.

 

[Poly Hive]

I have a vague memory from reading the American magazines in the 90's that this feeding of protein as substitute for pollen was discredited by one of the American Unis. As I say I cannot point to a paper just the memory that it was well discredited.

PH

 

[Popparand]

If bees wanted or needed milk they would surely take it directly from cows' teats. No mention of this in Eva Crane or anywhere else.

People, you have short memories. Have you forgotten mad cow disease? All brought about because of boffins at the Min of Ag and Fish, as it then was. Not wise to muck about with animal food-chains!

 

[Hivemaker.]

Not wise to muck about with animal food-chains!

Go tell the vegans that.

 

[sipa]

Animal/fish/insect derived proteins do not bring any benefits to the nutrition of honeybees that cannot be achieved from alternative protein sources.

I know of no current formulations that use them.

 

[madasafish]

Go tell the vegans that.

I was the object of some abuse from vegans about use of honey.. They wanted to do things to me I would not do to bees

I expect them all to die out as most innoculations appear to be based on cultures raised in eggs...

 

[For want of a better word]

I was the object of some abuse from vegans about use of honey.. They wanted to do things to me I would not do to bees

I expect them all to die out as most innoculations appear to be based on cultures raised in eggs...

Veganism seems to be a disease mostly of the wealthy middle classes who can afford to fund trendy food fetishes.

Their choice.... have you had an email from BEEGAN yet...???
Bit of an oddball..... wants to buy honey produced especially for vegans ( did reply to say vegans do not eat honey)

 

[Walrus]

Randy Oliver and his sons did a field trial on pollen subs in 2013/14 and, although there were difficulties due to the nature of doing field trials with bees, came up with some interesting results. In a nutshell:

- natural pollen was best
- several formulations on sale to beekeepers did very well, with the best (by my reading) being Ultra Bee by Mann Lake
- Ultra Bee claims to contain no animal derived protein although i don't know the actual formulation
- A "homebrew" formulation which included egg and phytonutrients was around the middle in terms of performance

Randy is doing another trial right now to test whether the addition of two vital nutrients (a sterol and a mineral) to Ultra Bee improves it. Again there are experimental difficulties (e.g. natural pollen coming in for some of the time).

In my area I nearly always have pollen coming in so pollen subs would be a waste of money, unless I wanted to get them going really early. In some areas or at some unusual times a pollen sub is certainly better than nothing. The best of the ones you can buy contain no animal derived protein, but natural pollen collected from bees and stored in the freezer is best.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Nope, you'll find the possibility of Infant Botulism is why you shouldn't feed honey to babies under 1 year old.
Very low risk, but there have been a few cases.

A few cases, but based on surmise rather than fact apparently - in one case they found a jar of honey in the kitchen of the infant's home which was infeced with the virus - but the infant had never been fed honey, and in another household, the infant had been fed honey but the honey, when tested was clear of any infection.

 

[For want of a better word]

Botulism is a rare and potentially fatal illness caused by a toxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum.

A nasty little bug with a close relative C tetani..... tetanus or lockjaw as it used to be called!

Tetanus is an infection of the nervous system that is always serious and often fatal. The bacteria, called Clostridium tetani, are all around us (for example in soil), and they enter the body through scratches, burns and cuts.

 

[Beefriendly]

A few cases, but based on surmise rather than fact apparently -.

Worth reading this case history written up in the BMJ where the infant was fed honey that did contain Botulism spores.
"Molecular typing, by fluorescent amplified fragment length polymorphism, showed that the C botulinum type A isolates from the honey samples were indistinguishable from the C botulinum type A strain from the infant but were different from C botulinum type A isolated from other UK cases of infant botulism. C botulinum was not detected in a sample of the infant’s formula milk powder."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3448763/