Making Healthy Honey Bee Protein Powder Meal
Honey bee supplemental feeding is a controversial topic. Some suggest that it’s only for times of need, others go overboard and feed their bees year-round, and there are those who claim that this practice does not follow proper beekeeping standards. So it’s a balance between feeding hives to increase brood rearing, maintain hive health and during times of dearth and scarce forage. Regardless of where you stand, supplemental feeding is an emergency food and is no substitute for a natural foraged diet.
Honey bees derive their nutrients from nectar and pollen. Pollen is the only natural protein source and contains essential amino acids, lipids, sterols, vitamins and minerals, whereas nectar primarily supplies carbohydrates for energy and also water.
Proper hive management uses sugar syrup and pollen supplements, and this article examines supplemental feeding in a 5-W 1-H format: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. If you want to know about the deficiencies of commercial feeds, there’s an article for that
How to Feed Honey Bees
Making Sugar Syrup
The ideal feeding solution depends on the season, and most recipes available use plain white sugar:
In spring & summer, a 1:1 sugar to water solution is used. Ensure that the final solution is warm to touch (~35°C) before being fed to bees.
This mix mimics the sugar concentration of natural nectar and provides bees with the required energy for brood rearing and wax building.
In autumn and mild winters, a thicker solution of 2 parts sugar to 1 part water is used. Prepare this by dissolving sugar into warm water, ensuring that the serving solution is warm to touch (~35°C).
This mix is ideal in the colder months as it allows bees to access carbohydrates without increasing the hive’s moisture content.
For colder winters, a candied sugar, fondant, is used. This consists of 4 parts sugar to 1 part water with lemon juice added to prevent sugar crystallization. The solidity of the fondant provides bees digestible sugars with a minimal moisture content. Placing the fondant on the top bars/near the cluster reduces the chances of individual bees freezing while extracting it.
To make fondant, add the 4-parts sugar, 1-part water and a few drops of lemon juice to a saucepan.
Stirring constantly, heat the mix to ~112°C until an even consistency is achieved.
Allow the mix to cool for several minutes (around 93°C) and pour the contents onto wax or parchment paper to set.
Once hardened, place on the top bars of the frames inside the hive or near the cluster.
If feeding during winter, be sure to select a warmer day to avoid disrupting the cluster.
Pollen Supplement
In times of natural pollen shortage, supplements are available in the form of pollen patties made from a combination of ingredients. A basic recipe using soy flour, brewers yeast, sugar and vegetable oil is as follows:
Mix the flour, yeast and sugar in a bowl, then add oil and stir until an even distribution is achieved.
Gradually add water into the mix and stir until it reaches a dough-like consistency.
From this dough, form patties around 1 cm thick and place them on wax/parchment paper.
Place the patties on the top bars or near the clustering bees, and monitor their consumption.
Overfeeding pollen patties can lead to dysentery and diarrhoea due to excess amino acid consumption.
Why Are these Ingredients Used to Make Pollen Patties?
Pollen is a source of essential nutrients for brood rearing and adult bee health, providing bees with the necessary proteins and fats, as well as carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. The nutritional value of pollen varies between species, and the interested beekeeper is advised to gather data on the plants and pollens in their local area.
Soy flour is used as a pollen substitute due to its superior amino acid1 profile when compared to wheat or rye flours, which are predominately carbohydrates. Soy contains around 40-50% protein, whereas wheat is around 10-14% protein.
Brewers yeast contains a balanced amino acid profile, as well as vitamins (specifically B- vitamins) and minerals. When the yeast is combined with the flour and vegetable oil, it forms a more complete pollen substitute that nurse bees can provide for the brood to eat in the form of bee bread.
When to Feed Honey Bees
Feeding bees is done to stimulate brood rearing in spring and summer, or in times of low or no natural forage. Feeding periods can range from a few days to a few weeks, and should be adjusted based on the monitoring data from bee and brood numbers. Supplemental feedings with sugar syrups and pollen substitutes ensures that the colony maintains enough strength to survive dearth periods. Other common situations include:
In winter. Bees rely on their stored honey as food, and if these stores are inadequate, the colony may starve and die. Monitoring hives in the months leading up to winter is vital to assess their stores and deciding whether supplemental feeding will be required.
Early spring is when colonies resume activities & the queen increases her egg laying. At times, the nectar may not be available to meet this surging demand, leading bees to rely on their stores. Feeding bees in this situation would prevent the colony from depleting their honey, supporting their ramping growth.
Newly housed bees from a package or swarm do not have the adequate stores to establish their colony. Providing them with sugar syrup will greatly assist them in their brood rearing and comb building activities until they can sufficiently gather nectar from their environment.
This is also applicable for beekeepers raising queen bees or performing hive splits, as supplemental feeding will help these newly-formed colonies prosper.
Feeding may be required in prolonged unfavourable weather conditions, such as sustained heavy rains or drought.
Additionally, there may be dearths in the period between major flowering seasons that may also require supplemental feeding.
Who Should Feed Honey Bees?
All beekeepers should maintain strong colonies– they provide better pollination and honey production, as well as disease and pest resistance. However to the average person, the idea of feeding bees with sugar syrup or pollen substitutes implies that these products will subsequently taint the honey, which is untrue.
The increased stimulation to colonies from feeding prepares them to raise brood in preparation for commercial pollination, or assists them in maintaining colony health during times of dearth or beekeeper-mediated migration. Different feeding strategies are available depending on the circumstances, and as the beekeeper gains experience, they will have sufficient data to know whether when to deploy syrup or dry feed to manage their hives.
Why Feed Honey Bees?
As previously stated, honey bees are predominately fed in the spring and summer to stimulate brood rearing. This leads to multiple downstream effects ranging from better honey production, increased pollination of plants and greater bee numbers (also as a result of swarming, which subsequently increases the number of available colonies for the beekeeper).
Sugar syrup and pollen substitutes are not the sole source of supplemental bee nutrition. Honey can also be fed to bees, however the bees appear to prefer sugar syrup over honey, potentially due to the syrup’s unrefined nature.
Additionally, feeding bees honey from other hives carries a risk of disease transmission of bacteria like AFB (American Foulbrood), whose spores may be present in the supplied honey. Any honey that is provided for the bees to consume should be irradiated to remove traces of harmful microorganisms.
Where to Feed Honey Bees
There are many commercial and improvised methods used to feed bees. Three such commercial examples are:
Use of an inner cover feeder, which consists of a crown board with a plastic well for holding syrup (typically ~ 1L volume), that sits below the lid.
An alternative method includes placing a syrup-filled zip-lock bag on top of frames. Pinholes are pierced in the filled bag, allowing the bees to access its contents. The small-sized hole will create sufficient surface tension that prevents the entire liquid from spilling inside the hive, and provides a steady stream of sugar to bees.
An entrance feeder is an upright container filled with syrup and placed at the hive entrance (similar to a bird feeder; volumes vary).
An alternative method is piercing the lid of a syrup-filled jar/soda bottle. The pierced lid is inverted and placed on a plate or elevated structure near the hive, where it slowly drips out for a bee to collect.
This method can be upscaled with a plastic bucket from a hardware store. Just make sure not to block the hive entrance!
The frame feeder is a vessel placed directly inside the hive and is generally equivalent to the size of two frames. It is a 2-3L container with perforated cylinders for a bee to crawl into in order to access the syrup.
The zip-lock bag is another alternative here. Furthermore, individual frames can be dusted with fine sugar granules (e.g: commercial icing sugar) and placed back into the hive for the bees to consume.
Pros and Cons of Honey Bee Feeding Methods
Each method has its advantages and disadvantages; the beekeeper is encouraged to trial them all to find what works best.
From a honey bee health perspective, the inner cover method causes the least disturbance to the hive. The syrup well can be topped up from the crown board without exposing the entire hive to the external environment.
The entrance or open feeder method is most convenient for the beekeeper, however care must be taken as the syrup can attract bees from other hives, which increases the risk of disease transmission and could facilitate the spread of parasitic bee mites.
The frame feeder is the most disruptive yet secure method, and since hives are opened more often in the spring and summer, beekeepers can refill it during inspections to minimise colony disturbance.
What is Lacking in Supplemental Feeding?
As the name implies, supplements are not a primary food source like natural forage. Pollen and nectar varieties contain different concentrations and types of nutrients that are difficult to replicate through supplemental feeding. Like humans, optimal health for honey bees is achieved through a varied diet. Indeed, a lack of a diverse diet has been implicated in cases of disappearing honey bees.
The basic ingredients provided above do not share the same vitamin and mineral concentrations as natural forage (e.g, lack of vitamin C). Soy flours and brewers yeast are just one of the many protein sources available to bees, and a consideration must be made for other nutrients to meet the needs of the bees’ life cycle. A proprietary honey bee feed blend may be used to provide additional amino acids and nutrients, however bees will not utilise this if there are more suitable food sources available.
Using Insect Larvae as a More Effective Pollen Substitute
Adapted from “when bees eat larvae“
Pavlovic and colleagues fed colonies pollen substitutes made from yellow mealworm larvae and sugar, and found these bees to consume significantly less food than colonies fed with yeast- or pollen-based patties (Pavlovic et al., 2022). Despite eating less, they maintained a healthy body weight comparable to the other groups (fed on yeast, pollen or sugar patties), suggesting that T. molitor flour is highly nutritious, and is more bioavailable for bees.
Dried yellow mealworm larvae contains around 33% fat and 51% protein (Zhao et al., 2016). Having a higher nutrient concentration than pollen (which varies between 1.5% to 48.4% protein and 1.2% to 24.6% lipid; Vaudo et al., 2020), mealworm patties can mixed with sugar to achieve the desired ratios of proteins, lipids and carbohydrates.
Hocherl & colleagues showed that bees will consume more of a less-nutritious source (corn pollen) compared to a superior diet from multifloral sources (Höcherl et al., 2012). However, if bees were offered a choice of consuming foraged pollen versus mealworm patties, the pollen will be selected over T. molitor.
You can’t fight nature, even if her replacement is “more nutritious and easier to obtain”… That previous sentence was not about bees. Nonetheless, bees consumed less mealworm patties compared to other products, suggesting that it is indeed a more nutritious supplemental feed, as less amounts were required to achieve the same health effects.
If you will not “eat ze bug“, then your bees might.
The Purpose of Feeding Honey Bees
Feeding bees is more of an art than a science, and the beekeeper is encouraged to gather data and assess their local conditions and individual hive health before deciding on the methods to use.
This article provided an overview into the supplemental feeding of bees, and the ways in which it can be done. An explanation of the formulations used in sugar syrups and pollen substitutes were provided, along with a comparison to natural sources. Additionally, examples of commercial and improvised supplement delivery methods were covered, and their advantages and disadvantages were identified.
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Footnotes
- Bees require several essential amino acids like lysine, methionine and tryptophan, and these are present in high amounts within soy flour, making it an ideal pollen substitute. ↩︎
What is the good method of preparing protein candy using soy flour
I’ve bought my patties ready-made, so the recipe below is what I’ve heard from other beekeepers, apologies:
The most basic method is to make sugar syrup (1:1 ratio sugar:water) and then add soy flour until it reaches a desirable thickness. Place the resulting mixture on baking paper and then place on the top bars of the frame, towards the centre so the bees can start eating it.
You can start with ~300ml syrup and then add flour until the protein candy is made, and give that to your bees. It’s better to start with too little than too much patty because if the bees can’t finish it, it will become spoilt. Experiment with the amounts that work best for you, check on the hives weekly (whenever the weather is right)
The above is a very basic patty. If you want to enhance the nutritional content, add some honey and brewer/baker’s yeast to the mixture. Yeast is added in a 4:1 ratio (4 parts flour, 1 part yeast), whereas honey can be added in a small amount for the extra micronutrients (vitamins etc…).
All the best and send me photos if you end up doing it