[psm1212]

Beeflow from Argentina. Problems solved folks. Shut down the forum.


https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/17/tech/beeflow-mission-ahead/index.html

 

[LizardKing]

"Beekeepers feed the bees the plant-based formula, which contains sugar, water and proprietary ingredients, about once a week."


How can it be better than pollen and nectar?

 

[Radar]

I suppose that the extra honey also contained " sugar, water and proprietary ingredients"

 

[Michael Bush]

>"Beekeepers feed the bees the plant-based formula, which contains sugar, water and proprietary ingredients, about once a week."

My bees gather that every day from the flowers... a plant based formula which contains sugar, water and proprietary ingredients...

 

[AHudd]

Oh boy, beemeth.

Alex

 

[LizardKing]

So, feeding bees their special food makes them forage earlier than their "generic standard non-super bee"?
If they were well fed why would they have to forage more and wouldn't that mean they wouldn't live as long?

oh nevermind, take my money, ya gots me at SUPER-BEES....

 

[Tim KS]

Oh, a CNN report. They're so accustomed to fake news, they don't know the difference.

 

[ifixoldhouses]

Oh, a CNN report. They're so accustomed to fake news, they don't know the difference.

Yeah, I was almost starting to believe it til I saw it was on CNN..

 

[crofter]

It sounds to me like a hyped up description for what beekeepers would call feeding a pollen and sugar patty. Move along folks, nothing to see here!

 

[Arnie]

So now honeybees, like baseball players, will need to be randomly tested for PED's?

 

[mamm7215]

Proprietary ingredients=cocaine

 

[JWChesnut]

Two of the principles in the BeeFlow startup published this paper on Oct 1, 2019.

Effect of Abscisic Acid (ABA) Combined with Two Different Beekeeping Nutritional Strategies to Confront Overwintering: Studies on Honey Bees’ Population Dynamics and Nosemosis


Full text can be downloaded at: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/10/10/329

The start up has deep pocket Silicon Valley seed money, and I think the best way to understand the PR that is spreading is that it is a "story" to empty the pockets of Silicon Valley investors.

Corporate info here:http://www.beeflow.co/en/

 

[little_john]

Thanks for the link - I'll look that up tonight. Very curious - Abscisic Acid (ABA) - is a plant hormone, and afaik didn't exist in animals, and wouldn't therefore have any function outside of the plant. Oh well ...
LJ

 

[JWChesnut]

Thanks for the link - I'll look that up tonight. Very curious - Abscisic Acid (ABA) - is a plant hormone, and afaik didn't exist in animals, and wouldn't therefore have any function outside of the plant. Oh well ...
LJ

That's because you are not in the biz of selling snake oil to Silicon Valley zillionaires for three million dollars. Come on man, get with the times, everybody is a snake oil salesman now.

 

[JWPalmer]

Proprietary ingredients=cocaine

I can see a new and very expensive honey variety coming from bees that coked up. Night Blooming Jasmine honey.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cestrum_nocturnum

Caution, may be toxic, but so are puffer fish.

 

[dudelt]

I already have Super Bees at my house. They are easy to pick out, they are wearing a cape.

 

[leww37334]

Creating super bees is how we got africanized bees and they came from South America too

 

[little_john]

Two of the principles in the BeeFlow startup published this paper on Oct 1, 2019.

Effect of Abscisic Acid (ABA) Combined with Two Different Beekeeping Nutritional Strategies to Confront Overwintering: Studies on Honey Bees’ Population Dynamics and Nosemosis

Full text can be downloaded at: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/10/10/329

Again, thanks for the link - appreciated.

This morning I've had a chance to look at that paper and ... well, it looks like there is 'something' to this ABA saga - but I'm not convinced (yet) that's it's anything other than a man-made 'something else to worry about' issue.

This is how the paper starts off:

"During the past years, our group has focused on the role that abscisic acid (ABA), a natural component that is present in nectar, honey, and pollen [39,40] as well in honey bees [39,41] plays an important role in bees’ health. ABA is a sesquiterpenoid hormone that play important roles, mainly in higher plants, in many cellular processes including seed development, dormancy, germination, vegetative growth, and environmental stress responses [42]."

So I duly followed-up on those references.
[42] is a paper concerned exclusively with plant biosynthesis - so nothing of relevance there.

[40] is a paper which describes the detection of exceptionally high levels of both isomers of ABA, plus a derivative of those acids within Strawberry Tree Honey (a honey from the Mediterranean, principally Sardinia), the high levels of which could be used as an assay marker to identify this particular honey amongst others. Other than that, not very informative.

[39] is more enlightening, but now we come across some conflicting statements:

"The results show that ct-ABA is added to the honey mainly from nectar, honeydew and pollen, and not by the bee itself. Possibly the bee might be responsible for conversion of ct- into tt-ABA, since honey contains rather more tt-ABA than does the nectar." [...] "It is proposed that the ratio of ct- to tt-ABA content of honey depends on the extent of manipulation by the bees in converting nectar into honey, which in turn reflects upon nectar water content and environmental conditions."

[41]

"The primary food of adult honey bees (Apis mellifera) is honey prepared by bees from nectar, provided by plants in order to stimulate the bee’s pollination service. Nectar consists of carbohydrates, amino acids and water, as well as other minor compounds whose proportion varies among plant species and whose biological implications in the honey bee physiology require intense research."

Pollen is therefore being ignored in the above as a bee 'food', despite the pollen-grain coat being rich in ABA - which of course is exactly where the plant requires it for subsequent seed development.

"This [the observation that newly emerged workers had 7x the level of ABA (isomer not specified) found in L5 larvae - LJ] strongly suggests an endogenous capacity of bees to generate ABA. In supporting this suggestion, honey bees possess the genetic information required for the indirect ABA biosynthesis that is found in plants ..."

This last paragraph is perhaps the most intriguing of anything I've thus far read about 'ABA and bees' - BUT - if ABA is freely available in the pollen (and as claimed, in the nectar) of plants, and if indeed the honey bee has the potential to synthesise it's own ABA, then why on Earth do we need to think in terms of supplying it as a food supplement ? All we need to do as beekeepers is to leave a reasonable amount of honey behind during harvesting, and - if you really must - provide pollen patties made from real pollen and not an artificial substitute.

LJ

 

[GregV]

...... if ABA is freely available in the pollen (and as claimed, in the nectar) of plants, and if indeed the honey bee has the potential to synthesise it's own ABA, then why on Earth do we need to think in terms of supplying it as a food supplement ? .........
LJ

So you can sell the pills.
Just the same as the multi-vitamin pills (multi-B$ business).

First - must create the pill market.
Same old.

 

[LizardKing]

then why on Earth do we need to think in terms of supplying it as a food supplement ? All we need to do as beekeepers is to leave a reasonable amount of honey behind during harvesting, and - if you really must - provide pollen patties made from real pollen and not an artificial substitute.

LJ

That's the million dollar question and the smartest answer to it.....