What is the best artificial diet for honeybees?
Spoiler alert beekeepers' recipes might be the best available out there. hands down
Welcome to insidethehive.tv the show that takes you into the world of bees I'm your host,
Dr. Bee. In nature, honey bees get their nutrition mainly from flowers. They get nectar for energy
source carbohydrates, and they use pollen as their protein source. Depending on the region and the
time of the year, honeybees might not have enough in nature for them to survive. if they don't have
their nutrition, they succumb, and they die. That's why along evolution, honeybees evolved to
accumulate reserves of honey and pollen. However modern beekeeping have a tendency to take those
natural reserves from honeybees and in those times when they don't have anything in the surroundings
the beekeepers tend to give them some supplementation something that is cheaper
and i would say with less nutritional value and in today's world we have several commercially
available diets out there that people can go to the internet and buy a bunch of them and
give them their bees but the question the question that everybody wants to know is
which one is better which one is the best and which one is the worst this video is brought to
you by our fans on Patreon if you like content like this please considering supporting us on
Patreon thank you dr vincent Ricigliano from the USDA research laboratory in baton rouge
together in a collaboration with Randy Oliver from scientificybeekeeping.com released last
week a very important study comparing these different dyes and they measured many different
things to really answer the question which one is best which one is the worst which one do what
Randy Oliver's apiary in grass valley is a very good location to perform such kind of studies
because randy as a local beekeeper there, he knows when there is a shortage of nutrition,
and that's important because if you perform that kind of study an in a place where there is other
food around natural sources that can mess up with the experiment because the bees might be
consuming something from outside and not really consuming the patties the artificial patties the
supplementation and then my messed up with the results a total of 144 highs was split into eight
feeding groups where they're going to feed with different protein supplementations and also they
were spreading in three different sites and the feeding groups received the following commercial
available honeybee diets in the market. Global patties ultra bee book soft mega b
ap 23 healthy bees homebrew which is a homemade recipe from beekeepers
in a controlled diet with sugar only no protein at all
The experiment started in the middle of August and go all over february which
is a critical moment for beekeepers to prepare the bees for almond pollination
this figure shows when they start how many times the bees were fed and the times they
collect samples for analysis the researchers evaluate the population size average b weight
nutrition related gene expression gut microbiome and pathogen levels and boy what a difference
the first difference they found was the consumption of these diets which one the bees
prefer better from august to november apparently there was no difference the bees were consuming
all of these diets in similar levels however from december to february which is a critical
moment to build up to prepare the bees for almond pollination there was a significant difference in
the intake of those supplementation by the bees so which one the bees prefer so global patties
and the recipe from the beekeepers homebrew was the preferred one those are the ones that the bees
consume a lot in that period of time where they found the differences followed by box soft mega b
ap 23 uta b and in last place healthy bee patties which was lower consumption that
the negative control themselves they have no protein at all something that strikes me here
that ultra b also didn't perform well and in previous studies from randy oliver himself
in similar conditions in a similar location showed in the past that ultra b was the best
And of course, the consumption of these proteins patties
translated in the size of the population as you can see in this figure right here.
global and homebrew diets produce the largest colony with an average of seven and eight frames
of bees respectively at the end of the experiment in February Healthy bees and sugar control diets
produce the smallest colonies averaging two and three frames of adult honeybees, respectively
what are the differences in those diets that could explain such thing when the researchers look
at the total amount of proteins in those diets nothing really stand out take a look the two diets
with the best performance show huge difference in the total amount of protein in those diets kind of
making us to think because studies from the past tell us that 20 to 30 percent total protein in a
diet is the way to go for optimal performance of honey bee hives however in this study that's not
following the same rule for example homebrew diets the one with the best performance had around 20
percent and global patties have around 16 percent so there is a discrepancy here and we might need
to revise the old studies because it's not fitting with this study that was very well performed but
what about fat what about lipids when the researchers look at the lipid levels i think
there is one lesson that we can learn here look at this graph apparently the two protein patties
that perform better was less than one percent fat compared with the other patties out there
so what about fiber so as you can see in this figure right here fiber didn't tell us too much
there is no much difference between the diets but very interestingly apparently the total
amount of sugar might give us a clue to explain why healthy beef patties didn't perform so well
healthy patties were the only one that reached 60 percent of sugar content that's a lot of sugar in
that protein patty from the 60percent 40 percent is glucose perhaps when the bees are looking for
protein sources they don't wanna much sugar involved a lot more studies need to be done
to confirm those things i'm just reading the graphics right here but what about the ratios
we know from from studies in laboratory conditions that uh apparently a high protein lipid ratio
is bad for honey bees in a low protein lipid ratios was better for honey bees in laboratory
conditions so apparently there is a messed up with the physiology when you have too
much protein and low amount of lipid however in this study what happened was the opposite because
the two proteins the two diets that performed better are the ones that had the highest protein
lipid ratio which is quite interesting and again i know we talked about this before in this channel
that we need to be very careful when we perform when trying to translate information from
laboratory conditions to the field conditions there is a whole new a completely new ball game
when you deal with the cup with the couple bees or when you deal with the whole colony with all the
bees interacting with each other and the social organism working in their best but things get much
more interesting when the researchers start to look other things for example they look the size
of the bees they also look uh in an in nutrition related gene expression and they also look in the
gut microbiome but all of these things i cannot talk right now because i have an appointment but
i will cover all of this is going to have a continuation of this video next week so we
can just mention just go over this um results and also i'm going to conclude the whole thing
and give my take on that if you like this video please consider subscribing to the channel and
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