What is the best protein patty supplement for honeybees last week we started our conversation
about a recent scientific publication where dr Vincent Ricigliano from the USDA be research
lab in baton rouge and Randy Oliver from scientific beekeeping.com compared different commercially
available honeybee diets in the market in the video number one we could see that two
brands containing natural pollen stand out building strong colonies at the end of the
trial global patties and homebrew a homemade recipe from a beekeeper also the studies showed
that healthy bee patties were the worst not only delivering the weakest colony at the
end of the study but also the only brand that the bees rejected and throw it away from the
colony no surprises here but what many people at home were surprised about was the performance
of ultra-v the leading protein pad is in the market right now how can the leading brand
perform so well in one day and so bad on another
What is the best protein patty supplement for honeybees?
Last week we started our conversation about a recent scientific publication where Dr.
Vincent Ricigliano from the USDA bee research lab in Baton Rouge and Randy Oliver from scientific
beekeeping.com compared different commercially available honeybee diets on the market.
In the video number one, we could see that two brands containing natural pollen stand
out, building strong colonies at the end of the trial.
Global patties and homebrew a homemade recipe from a beekeeper also the studies showed that
healthy bee patties were the worst, not only delivering the weakest colony at the end of
the study but also the only brand that the bees rejected and threw it away from the colony.
No surprises here, but what many people at home were surprised about was the performance
of Ultra-bee the leading protein pad is in the market right now.
How can the leading brand perform so well in one day and so bad on another?
This research was partially funded by Project Apis m more about them at the end of this
video.
To be honest i'm not surprised at all and at the same time i don't think ultra b is
a bad product as i mentioned in this channel many times before honeybee research is a complicated
field because we cannot control most of the variables when performing our experiments
when we look at all honeybee trials on nutrition ever published it is clear that we don't have
all pieces of this puzzle Emily Noordyke working on her master thesis in Dr. Jamie Ellis's
laboratory published a great review on this topic after reviewing all published studies
on bee nutrition she concludes: "the collective literature suggests mixed results this is
due to a few primary reasons one there is a multitude of diets to test two the diets
can have different formulations which change frequently three there is a great variability
in the environments in which tests are conducted four results from laboratory studies do not
necessarily reflect what would occur in the field and five many of the diet studies are
missing key design elements".
The two main components of Randy's studies in my view are the number two and three from
this list, the diet can change frequently and the environment can bring surprises to
discuss all the details of the trial I invite randy oliver for a live stream and all of
you at home are invited to follow it live randy has published in his website another
trial compared with protein patties before with results very different from this new
study let's compare rando's previous trial against this new one in collaboration with
the usda on the old trial from august to november all groups started with 5 frames of bees and
3 of them showed some growth while other other groups went down with ultra b being the champion
at the time winning even against natural pollen in the new trial from august to november all
started with 8 frames of bees and all of them lose colony strength some of them drastically
interestingly in the old trial all experimental groups bounced back in february growing substantially
reaching colony sizes bigger than the beginning of the trial however in the new study only
a couple of groups grow back in february and only homebrew surpasses the original colony
sizes from the beginning of the experiment the first conclusion is that in the new study
the bees did not grow as they would normally grow why did the bees consume the patties
apparently yes the data showed that this means that the bees were well fed and we need to
look in another direction to try to explain what's going on here why didn't the well-fed
bees grow as in previous studies something must have happened in the bee yard to all
colonies independent of the diet reindeer describes no queenless colonies were found
perhaps some another queen issue perhaps the biggest lesson here is about the importance
of honeybee research discoveries about honeybee nutrition can fundamentally change the industry
however it is very hard as you can see here with all these variables that we cannot control
and also it's very expensive that's why supporting Project apis m is vital, Project apis m mission
is to fund research and efforts to improve honeybee health project apis m is behind many
important projects about honeybee health that i covered in this channel in the past for
example Dr. Kaira Wagner work on varroa mites, Project apis m, Dr. Ramsey's work on varroa
feeding of fat bodies, Project apis m, my own work on viruses in the past project apis
m I want to take the opportunity here to thank Project Apis m for the work they do and invite
everyone at home to visit www.projectapism.org and consider a donation, Thank you!
Next week I will continue to cover Randy Oliver's study looking at what the researchers found
when they look at the amino acid content in each diet.
Good stuff is coming up.
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I also want to invite you to watch this next video right here.
Thanks for watching InsideTheHive.TV the show about bees, see you guys next week.