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Gillybee

New Bee
Joined
Sep 17, 2009
Messages
43
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0
Location
uk
Hive Type
14x12
Number of Hives
15
Has anyone had any experience with the product in question, as I would like to know if the mixture is supposed be runny, thick like a paste, if its a paste then the instructions on the bag is wrong, it tells me to make a 50% sugar syrup then add warm water then add the required powder.

Quantities as per Instructions are as follows for an 10kg bag........

3 Litres syrup
1 litre warm water
5kg Feedbee.

This is to make patties by the way, and I have halved the quantities to make 5kg.
This is very runny at this recipe.
 
I made up a small amount a couple of weeks ago and it turned out fairly stiff the next day. It was thick enough and sticky enough to stick to the sides of the bucket.

Darren.
 
Thanks for that link Hivemaker.
I couldn`t think of how to explain the consistency but it is just like peanut butter
I haven`t used any on my hives yet, it was just sitting on my shelf and I got bored so I mixed some up.

Darren.
 
Not tried feedbee either,but have used Neopoll and the bee's love that,Rooftops now sells Neopoll at a good price.
 
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My girls are grabbing pollen every chance they get at the moment and the Hazels are just about there now.
Is it worth getting some Neopoll to stick on now ?
I don`t need to build them up for rape but I`d like to get them going for a bailey frame exchange earlyish in the spring.

Darren.
 
Darren
yes it is worth it for the reason you give above and as long as we have this poor foraging weather,but if you start to feed with Neopoll and the weather stays poor,don't let them run out of the feed untill the weather is fine and they are collecting plenty of pollen for themselves. PM rooftops,sure he will sort you out with some,and it works out cheaper than feedbee, as its all ready to just use.

http://globalpatties.com/pages/articles/nutrition2.htm
 
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Thanks for all the replies, I checked out the link and seems to me I have been conned into buying it, not really going to be any good, money gone down the drain, typical of me thinking it was going to be good stuff by feeding my girls to give them an extra boost in time for the rape.
If its not that good then why are bee suppliers stocking it?

It does say on the bag for bees, although for bumblebees and not "HoneyBees" maybe there's a difference between the two species of bee.
 
Hi Dave,

Yep your right I did see it on the bag eventually with glasses, my fault for not looking properly.

But why is there such a negative veiw about it, surely it must work for the benefit of the bees.

I have since looked up their website Feedbee.com but can't see that it's made from peas as someone has suggested, from where did he get his information about this I don't know.

Gillybee.
 
I have no idea why such a negative view on it, this is the first time I have used it. It smells and tastes nothing like peas that some people are saying (IMO) The company has been going a few years now and if they sold crap they wouldn't still be in business. The reason I bought some was that a local commercial bee keeper swears by it, so I thought I would give it a go too.I am a firm believer that you need to try a product to see if it is rubbish, not just take it on face value from others.
 
EYNB

Haven't tried it but completely agree with you. I give things a try before either praising or condemning the products.

Most reviews are written by people who are dis-satisfied, the satisfied customers don't bother to comment.

Peter
 
I made no comments about it myself, just put some links for you to read what others have said,yes they are in the past,most things are,please will you except my appologies for putting the links in if it has offended/upset/or unhinged you in some way.
I believe the formula has changed,because it had to.

PS Manleys formula for thymol mix goes back to the middle of the last century,should we perhaps ignore all that has ever been written in the past.
 
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I made no comments about it myself, just put some links for you to read what others have said,yes they are in the past,most things are,please will you except my appologies for putting the links in if it has offended/upset/or unhinged you.
I believe the formula has changed,because it had to.

PS Manleys formula for thymol mix goes back to the middle of the last century,should we perhaps ignore all that has ever been written in the past.

I made no inference that they were your comments.
No need for apologies Hivemaker, it takes a lot more than a few comments to upset or offend me. I was just pointing out the age of the comments and that to stay in business the company would have to have adjusted its formula to one that works, so the comments were about the old formula so were no longer valid (IMO)

Yes Manley's formula does come from an age gone bye, but it did, does and will keep on working , Thats the difference.
 
I got free 25 kg bag to test that stuff two years ago. Bees did not like it. Even if i put 30% pollen bees did not like it.

I give the bag to the milk farmer but even cows did not eate it.

I dropped off that beefee from patty and bees start to consume the patty as before.

I have seen that wide advertising but I do not touch that stuff any more.

The flour had a taste of pea.
 
I'm with Finman- tried it last year and had to clean my topbars of uneaten filth
 
I tried the stuff 3 weeks to 25 five hives and then I understood to drop off that stuff from patty.
 
Quite a bit about it on BEE-L, this post is from nov 2009,so only 4 months,yes sounds like they had problems to start with,but better now.


It is gratifying to hear that all the diets are being found satisfactory.

We have come a long way from a decade or so back when the prepared diets available were pretty much limited to home or farm-made and a BeePro patty which was overpriced, mucky and heavily overpackaged. It is largely due to the efforts of members and former members of this list that the issue -- protein supplementation -- has taken a leap forward in North America and the number, quality and useability of products on the market has mushroomed.

Whether or not major advances have been made in applying what was known decades ago (I doubt it), availability and competition have increased, driving down the prices, and, significantly, the format has been improved vastly.

Is there a lot of difference between the patties on the market when fed to free-flying bees? I doubt it. Huge differences are much easier to create in marketing than they are are to demonstrate consistently in the field.

As with many consumer products, marketers try to tart up generic what are really basic commodity items in various way to win mind and market share. and justify higher prices than competitors, while at the same time they try to find cheaper ingredients to cut costs and use recipe secrecy as a cover.

The fact that one product shines in one test and another product eclipses it in another test demonstrates that there is probably no clearly superior product in all situations, and also, possibly that the products being compared in each test -- although bearing the same name -- may not be the same formulation. Perhaps the product used in one trial was a better factory batch or fresher than another. Trying to get everything equal in these experiments is actually impossible.

Some novel ingredients may be more perishable than others and further, they may be in the product one month and not the next , and we will never know. (If we do not know what the ingredients are, we also do not know what they might become when they degrade, bit that is another topic totally).

Anyone who thinks this topic -- bee nutrition -- is something that can be totally understood, predicted, and measured has to be far, far smarter than I can imagine, or deluded, or both. <g>

Because this topic -- nutrients, mixing, storage, metabolism, etc. -- is so convoluted and recursive, once the basics have been covered -- and they were many years back -- people's eyes glaze over and they beg for a simple story or brand name to grasp.

Because there are now big dollars involved, this area is increasingly becoming, rather than a scientific question, a marketing playground with all the usual bogus arguments, distractions for detail, and artificial distinctions being made between basically similar products.

People easily latch onto brand names and assume, for example, that all the Mann Lake protein products are the same. Actually, my understanding is that the dry product and the patties are different and that there are, and have been, a number of formulations of each. The same applies to MegaBee. This is documented. Feedbee has gone through many changes and I am pleased to hear that they currently have a formula which works, because early versions were reported to have big problems.

As a result, I conclude that they all work, that there is variability on the products in stock, and that availability, freshness and price is more important than brand name.

Caveat Emptor.
 
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