How to make pollen patties?

[Alienor]

Good evening to everyone,

who can teach me to make pollen patties?
What ingredients are needed and where can I get them in europe?

Pollen supplement dough is very expensive here, and in fall I will have to serve about 300 hives.
If I am forced to buy a ready-to-use pollen food the costs are about $5 per kilo~2lbs.
The work to make the dough isn't the problem but the cash-flow.... :(

Best regards, Alienor

[Michael Bush]

I only feed pollen in the early spring. The cheapest way to get it is to use pollen traps and get the bees to gather it. I like to feed it dry in empty hives so it won't get rained on and let the bees gather it.

Do a search on pollen patties and you'll find many recipies posted here. Most have whole soy flour as the main ingredient.

[loggermike]

I have good luck mixing dried brewers yeast with honey syrup(no pollen except what is in the honey).Here it comes in 50 lbs.bags for around thirty USA dollars.With all the good German beer being made,there must be a company there that sells the dried yeast at a reasonable price.

[Ben Brewcat]

Anyone ever try offering JUST brewer's yeast? I only ask because I routinely discard a quart or so of fresh, healthy yeast slurry... if dried, and if the bees would want it, I'm all set! Maybe just dry it and mix later into patties?

[Alienor]

Thanks for your answers!
I will have to use pollen patties in fall because of lack of nature pollen. My bees will start brood rearing around christmas but natural pollen will be available not before end of March. Beekeeping season ends usually at end of July; after that date very few pollen will be available.
So I want to support them with pollen supplement feeding.

This year the very first time to take a quick look inside was March 2nd and there were lots of bees and food but NO pollen left and NO brood.
I started feeding pollen supplement immediately and at March 20 there were lots of capped brood.
At this time we have lots of food left but we are very short in pollen.
So I want to feed pollen supplement in fall and hope to help continuing brood rearing from christmas until real pollen will be available.

Am I right or wrong?

Best regards, Alienor

[Michael Bush]

I haven't had a lot of luck with patties even of real pollen and I haven't had a lot of luck with pollen substitute. I usually feed real pollen, dry, in open feeders or I mix real pollen 50/50 with pollen substitute.

But them having pollen in the winter will probably help a lot on brood rearing. Maybe they'll take the patties.

[loggermike]

Clarence Wenner,who was a very well known California beekeeper,found many years ago that the fall pollens in parts of Ca. were nutritionally inadequate for the bees to raise the maximum amount of healthy young bees to carry through until spring. He fed the yeast patties twice in Sept. and again in Jan.and found these to be his best hives by far.This is one of the secrets to having strong hives for early pollination.

[Jim Fischer]

> fall pollens in parts of Ca. were nutritionally inadequate

I would not worry about this problem unless
one has a very dry climate or a very dry fall.
I'm sure that someone who wanted to take careful
measurements of nutritional factors would find
that any "spring pollen" is better nutritionally
than any "fall pollen". The same is true of
nectar sucrose percentages. Spring nectar tends
to have a higher sugars concentration than fall.

Spring plants have lots of competition for the
attention of few pollinators, so they must offer
"better stuff", or they get no visitors, and
don't reproduce. The plants that do reproduce
are those that offer the better "rewards" for
pollinators. It is an "arms race" of sorts.
Very Darwinian.

Fall flowers don't have to offer so much,
because there are so many pollinators around
that the "competition" reverses, where the many
pollinators are competing for few flowers.

One interesting side-effect of "poor nutrition"
(which comes down to lousy pollen or the use
of a low-protein pollen substitute) is that it
tends to make for smaller bees. So if one wanted
to speed up or ease one's "regression" of a
colony, one might want to try putting a pollen
trap on all season, and feeding a low-quality
pollen substitute in the brood chamber to "force"
the creation of smaller (sadly, undernourished)
bees.

> fed the yeast patties...

Some people have success with brewer's yeast.
I've never bothered to try. Real pollen is
free, so pollen traps have a very good return
on investment in terms of cost-avoidance on
the yeast.

> ...This is one of the secrets to having
> strong hives for early pollination.

Oh yeah, no kidding, but you have to feed
"nectar" too. Thin syrup. That's what
triggers the enthusiastic brood rearing.
It is a bit of a gamble, in that expanded
brood rearing can result in some chilled
(frozen!) brood if you get a cold snap,
but I trust the bees to not try to raise
more brood than they can cover.

> I haven't had a lot of luck...
> I usually feed real pollen, dry, in open feeders..

"Dry" may be the problem. Patties can be
"spiked" with anything you want to make
them more attractive to bees. (Honey, sugar,
maybe even that Honey-Be-Healthy stuff, but
I dunno.) Adding a sweetener means that the
patties must stay in the freezer until deployed.

Another problem may be that open feeding does not
get the pollen into the hive where it can be
used before flying conditions exist. To build
up a colony for spring, everything has to be
easy for the bees to access well before weather
conditions allow flying.

[Michael Bush]

Dry is what has succeeded. They have ignored real pollen patties made with pollen and honey. They have ignored Bee-pro pollen patties from Mann Lake. But they have always gone crazy over open dry pollen or pollen dust. The 20 or so hives in my back yard will take half of a five gallon bucket of pollen dust in one warm day. There are usually quite a few warm, flying days in February, sometimes even in January.

[ikeepbees]

Loggermike,

Where do you get the yeast? That sounds like a pretty good price!

[loggermike]

Well the whole idea of feeding yeast patties in Sept is to 'fatten' the winter bees so they will be able to survive long enough to get the next seasons bees started.Like you say this is area specific.I'm sure there are plenty of places where feeding it is a waste of money.I try to get all mine on rabbitbrush in the fall.The yeast is just a supplement for the real thing-not a substitute.The thin syrup (with fumidil) in Jan. is exactly what you say-to kick start the brood raising.I feed them all no matter how heavy.

[loggermike]

The best yeast is BrewTech from International Ingredients Corp.I pick it up from a Cal. queen breeder who buys it by the truckload.

[Ben Brewcat]

If you have access to a beer or winemaking shop, propogating up a sizeable pile would be easy 'specially for those with access to huge volumes of sugar water smile.gif . $1 for a packet of dry yeast for the starter. 1/2 pound sugar per gallon tepid water, dissolved well, add yeast, ferment at room temp to completion in a stock pot, with the lid on to prevent fruit flies from amking vinegar for you. Chill to settle the yeast, pour off the spent sugar, and harvest the beautiful, tan and white yeastcake. Repeat as necessary to get the volume you need.

Brewers will note that this is designed to quickly produce yeast, not anything you'd enjoy drinking... this would give hooch a bad name!