View Full Version : Soy Flour
IndianaHoney
09-24-2008, 08:17 PM
I purchased some Pollen Sub from Kelley's. I believe this is nothing more than Soy flour. Will this work without brewer's yeast?
BigDaddyDS
09-25-2008, 02:30 PM
Soy flour works just like Brewer's Yeast. They both provide the protein.
tecumseh
09-26-2008, 05:42 AM
well if it is advertised as a substitute then it should contain several things besides soy flour. soy flour by itself will not contain the essential amino acids to meet MINIMUM levels of a honeybees dietary requirements.
I think brewer's yeast is a bit closer in composition to pollen... and would thereby be a much better substitute than soy flour.
why not forward your question directly to Kelley...
ps... I would first assume that Kelley acquires this product in a bag from someone else and they might not even truely know what is in each and every bag.
IndianaHoney
09-26-2008, 08:12 AM
I asked them over the phone. They said that it works just like it is, in patty form, or even fed dry.
I tend not to trust the word of a large company.
This is the discription on the webpage:
A high-nutrient, heat treated soy flour. Feed dry or mix it with sugar syrup to form a soft patty. Pollen Substitutes supply a portion of the nutrients honeybees need to produce larval food when there is an inadequate supply of natural pollen available for colony building.
Indiana, you may like this file called Fat Bees Skinny Bees - A Manual on Honeybee Nutrition for Beekeepers...
http://www.rirdc.gov.au/reports/HBE/05-054sum.html
Click the link to download the full report as PDF file.
It is very informative report on nutrition of pollen and pollen subliments, among other things.