Feeding bees with protein substances

The natural, natural protein food for bees is pollen and perg. In greenhouses, bee colonies often lack protein food. In the literature there are many recipes for feeding bees to liquid and condensed honey – pergovye and sugar – protein mixtures. Thus, the Institute of Apiculture recommends adding no more than 10-12% of protein substances – pollen, yeast, soy flour, milk powder, to the 88-90% sugar test prepared from powdered sugar, honey or an inventory of syrup. Eating them, bees enrich their body with protein and fat, but adult larvae can not be raised because of a weak protein concentration of food. In such cases, a relatively large number of eggs laid by the uterus can be observed in families, but a small number of young larvae and an almost complete absence of a printed brood.

In recent years, the practice of feeding bees pollen, imported. Bees eat it more willingly compared to Perga, but it is noticed that broods are grown less.

Beekeepers feed pollen to bees in different ways. The most widespread was the preliminary moistening of the pollen with sugar syrup, honey or boiled water. It would seem that bees will be more willing to take pollen mixed with honey. However, in our practice, bees are most willing to use pollen, diluted with warm boiled water (9 volumes of pollen and 2.5 volumes of water).

The pollen mixed with water forms a crumbly dough-like mass, which is fed to 100-300 g, depending on the strength of the bee family. This rate is enough for a week. When distributing a large amount of feed, the latter can sour, and in weak families can also be affected by moths.

The food is placed on the frame, above the brood. In order not to spoil the frames and avoid falling pieces of pollen on the bottom of the hive, under it lay a film in which several holes are made, allowing the bees from the streets to take pollen. For better access of bees to the stern

over the frames on the sides of the forage mass, several blocks are placed and everything is covered with a film on top. The dough-like mass of the bee is taken as it is eaten and the stocks are not stacked in the cells, so it should not be allowed to lack food over the frames.

Some beekeepers feed bees to dry pollen in pure form or in a mixture with sugar powder with and without the addition of flour outside the hive. Pollen is poured into honeycombs or in a small box. For convenience of work of bees on formation of an update in a box put twigs or a metal grid (it is better).

Successfully feed the bees with dry renewal according to the method proposed by the staff of the Institute of Zoology. To fill the update, the cells are placed horizontally. Pollen is poured only into bee cells to a depth of not more than 2/3 of their height. The pollen-filled frame is placed vertically and shaken gently. If this is not done, then out of the fully filled cells, the pollen is poured out to the bottom of the hive and the bees are thrown away. Frames with a dry, dry pollen are sprayed from the atomizer with 25-30% sugar syrup or boiled water, and only then they are placed close to the brood. After 2-3 days, the bee pollens the pollen and will continue to eat it. It is established that with dry feeding of bees pollen is not affected by moth larvae and does not deteriorate.

With a lack of pearls and pollen, bees are fed with perga substitutes. Back in the distant past, beekeepers noticed that in the absence of pollen in nature, bees tend to seek flour, and if it is not, they collect obviously useless substances (wood dust, dust, etc.) and form a renewal from them.

This prompted the beekeepers, in the absence of pollen, to exhibit flour of different cultures on the apiary. Bees willingly took away flour, which had a positive effect on the development of families. And only in the 30-ies. it was found that the starch grains of various types of flour, probably because of the strength of the shells, were not treated with digestive juices and, not digesting, passed through the intestine. The growth of the family from feeding bees to flour is explained by the presence in the nest of bees of a small amount of perga and, possibly, by the insignificant intake of pollen. The collection of flour by bees, with its uselessness, also had a positive effect on the growth of the family by motivating their activities.

It was noted that soy flour, degreased in factories by roasting and subsequent pressing, is absorbed by the body of bees well. This is due to the fact that the body of the bee was not digested by the shell of the pollen grains because of the absence in their stomach of the enzyme that cleaves the cellulose.

When the flour is toasted, the shells of the starch grains are destroyed, which facilitates the penetration of the digestive juice of the intestinal bee and the absorption of nutrients.

In the last decade, the most common substitutes for protein feed for bees were skimmed soybean and cotton flour. Adding 25-30% of pollen or perga to the flour replenishes the missing vitamins and stimulates the bees to eat it. Before consuming pollen or pergue, grind and mix thoroughly with flour. The mixture is kneaded on sugar syrup or honey in the form of a non-doughing test and, just like moistened pollen, is put over the frames.

If there is no possibility to add pollen or perga to flour, they are replaced with dry beer or baker’s yeast at the rate of 20% of baker’s yeast by weight, flour. The results will be better if at the expense of flour in the mixture to enter 20% of dry skimmed milk. To avoid sour milk and for medicinal purposes, biomycin is added to the mixture at the rate of 1 million ME per 1 kg of dried milk.

In the absence of yeast, you can prepare them yourself. To do this, one volume of warm water is mixed with one volume of fine grinding flour, after 5-6 hours, add a single volume of beer and a small amount of granulated sugar to the resulting mass. After a short stay in the heat, yeast is formed.

Substitutes perga is prepared in the following way. Pre-brew the syrup from one part by weight of water and two parts of granulated sugar. Yeast, approximately 20% of the weight of the flour, is dissolved separately in hot water and brought to a temperature close to the boiling point. In this case, yeast fungi are killed in order to avoid subsequent fermentation, but preserve the vitamins of group B, which are important in the processes of carbohydrate and protein metabolism. The cooled syrup and the yeast mass obtained are mixed and added to the flour until a non-converting dough is formed.

In the absence of fat-free soy or cotton flour, mustard, wheat, rye, buckwheat, oatmeal, rice, maize or cornmeal flour is used. The flour is sieved through a fine sieve and fried in an oven or oven.

Zootechnician for beekeeping proposed a pollen substitute, consisting of 6 parts of oat flour (oatmeal), 3 – mustard and 1-baker’s yeast. To flour and liquefied yeast, boiled in water for 2-3 minutes, add honey melted in a water bath. All this is ground to form a homogeneous mass.

Weak families can not take a protein mixture. For better eating and facilitating the training of bees to it, a small amount of the mixture is smeared into the cells of the honeycomb adjacent to the brood. Later, bees will get used to and will willingly take the mixture from the top of the nest

In the practice of beekeeping, many substitutes for perga were tested. So fed protein-vitamin paste, obtained from the juice of green mass of plants, previously used in livestock. For this purpose, the juice was kept for 45-50 minutes at a temperature of 75-90 њ C. As a result, a curd clot (nasta) was formed at the bottom of the reservoir, containing 60-65% protein and 2-4% fiber, calculated on a dry matter basis. The nutritional value of the paste is very large, and the cost is negligible. From 1 kg of green mass, 80-120 g of paste can be obtained. In experiments, the number of brood grown on protein-vitamin paste was twice as high as when using yeast as a protein feed.

Farms successfully fed bees a paste of chlorella.

In our practice, good results were obtained by feeding bees to the spores of matured rain mushrooms. Of course, they can not be counted on for industrial use because of their small spread, but in many places of rain mushrooms there are many, they are large, the population does not collect them, although in some countries they are considered delicacies.

To this we have to add that the substitutes for perg give satisfactory results for about the first three weeks, then their effectiveness drops significantly. This is due to the fact that the new generation of bees, brought up on substitutes, is weaker and does not have enough protein and fat in its body to grow a full-fledged replacement.