I was reding the recipe for pollen patties and was wondering if you needed to add the yeast to it, what does the yeast do. Could you just feed them sugar water and pollen or just straight pollen back to them. I wouldnt see why not this is how they would have pollen anyway.
I am asking this because yeast is so expensive.
If I may suggest, by the time you put that in, there will be a honey/pollen flow going on, (now) I read that they will not take it when there is pollen out there. I do have pollen subsitute and its a mix with everything in it. Just add sugar water. Or feed it dry. But again the bees don't care about it because there is an abundance of natural. The More experienced will probly have a better suggestion, but thats what I have been told.
Yes i was just asking for next early spring when they need it. I'd imagine they would take it plain.
YOu can feed back 100% pollen. Problem is you dont know if that pollen is diseased from a sick colony unless you collect it yourself.
The Brewers Yeast is the protein for the bees.
I planned on collecting the pollen from my own hives and feeding it back to them. How long does pollen last in the freezer. So they dont need the yeast, i thought that pollen had alot of protein in it by itself.
Could you just add some sugar water to get it to a dough like feeling and just put it in your hives?
whenever I add sugar water to my pollen sub. patties they always end up getting real hard like concrete so I do the wax paper thing to try and keep the moisture in as long as I can or mix them with corn syrup I also add 10 lbs. of pollen for every 40 or 50lbs. of substitute I get my pollen from Mann lake I think its roughly 3 oz. per 1 lb. patty if I could afford it I would feed them a straight pollen mix mann lake sells their pollen iradiated so it should be disease free I don't know if that process does anything to the nutritional value of the pollen but the bees really like it . This is just the way I do it hope this helps . Metzelplex
There are two things being discussed here--pollen and pollen substitute. Pollen substitute purchased from suppliers supposedly only needs water added. If you make your own there are recipes calling for soy flour brewer's yeast (not the bread yeast from the supermarket) and some other ingredients. If you feed your own pollen back, you only have to mix some sugar syrup or honey with it.
Thanks that is what i was wondering.
Quote from: Dick Allen on May 06, 2008, 11:27:33 AM
If you feed your own pollen back, you only have to mix some sugar syrup or honey with it.
I will be collecting my own pollen so i should only need to mix some sugar water or feed it straight to them right?
I believe you need to do a "search" for bee pollen patties, If I recall correctly you need to soak the pollen to soften them up, as it has dried during the collection and/or freezing, then they are mixed with sugar water
When all else fails, look for directions, no need to try and reinvent the wheel !
Bee-Bop