VTP bee nutrition podcast_edited

A man shares his journey into beekeeping, starting as a hobby with his stepfather and eventually becoming a professional in the field. He explains the importance of nectar and pollen for bees' diet and how they use it to make honey and bee bread. He also discusses the impact of climate change on bees, particularly the decrease in forage due to drought and heat stress. He suggests that supplementing bees' diet with sugar syrup and protein supplements can help maintain their health and colony strength. Well, great to be here, and thanks for having me. It's an interesting story. When I was 14 years old, my mother remarried, and my new stepfather decided that he and I should have a hobby together, something that neither one of us knew anything about, so we started off on the same level with something. And he told me to think about what kind of hobby I'd like, and being a 14-year-old boy, I was thinking about motorcycles and pool tables, and that sort of thing. He came home one day and said the neighbor was selling some bees, would I be interested in beekeeping? That sounded kind of cool. So we started off with three hives, and an old schoolteacher friend of his acted as our mentor and got us started in beekeeping and showed us the ropes. And for the four years that I was still living on the farm, we kept bees together and built it up to about 25 colonies. And one thing after another, eventually I went off to school, and in my undergraduate school I was taking a biology class and happened to be talking to the kid sitting next to me about bees, and the professor overheard me and asked me if I was a beekeeper. I said, oh, I'm just a hobby beekeeper. He said, would you like to keep bees for us here at the college? I said, no. He said, I'll pay you. I said, heck yeah. So I started keeping bees for the college, they wanted an observation hive and have a few colonies around the college just for teaching purposes, so I helped out with that. One degree after another, I eventually wound up at Michigan State and approached the entomology department. They had a new apiculturalist, and when they heard that I was interested in beekeeping, they asked me when I could start. They wanted to get their program started, and they need a technician and a teaching assistant. So I slid right into a program, and over the years I eventually developed a dissertation which led me into bee nutrition. I was looking at the link between European foulbrood and blueberry pollination. It seems that bees taken to blueberry pollination had an increased incidence of European foulbrood disease. So I studied that for my dissertation. It was interesting. I found that the pollen that bees collected during blueberries was buffering the larval gut up to a neutral pH making it more susceptible to the bacteria that causes European foulbrood disease. So that was my introduction to bees and beekeeping, and then from there I went off to Southeast Asia and did apiculture development work in Indonesia and all across Asia, but mostly in Indonesia. I set up Indonesia's first research and development center in Sumatra and was teaching local people how to manage bees to improve their income. That was quite interesting. It was a great rounding out of my scholastic learning to actually being applied in the field, especially in a place like Indonesia in the middle of the rainforest. Well, it's surprising how much beekeeping has changed. It's not as easy as it used to be. I'm sure you hear that quite a bit. Back then, there was plenty of forage and there was not as much herbicide being used. There were no roundup ready crops. We had plenty of weeds and other things to feed the bees and no parasitic mites. It was pretty easy. Queens would live two to four years and you'd pretty much take the honey off and manage the colony a little bit, but it's not as intensive as it is today. So the changes that I've seen in beekeeping are you just have to be a little more management intensive today and be on top of your bees. If you're not, you're buying new bees in the spring. What bees need is nectar from plants and pollen from plants. That's all they eat. It's nectar and pollen. They bring the nectar back to the hive and turn it into honey. The honey is their storage product. They use the honey for their winter and for their sugar needs, their carbohydrate needs, of course. The honey is their energy they use during the winter to keep the nest warm and survive the winter. The pollen is brought back to the hive and stored in cells, capped off with a little bit of nectar on top of the pollen. That causes a lactobacillus to grow in the pollen and ferments it just like making cabbage or something. It preserves it in the cells. So they're preserving the pollen for later use in the winter or in the fall or other times of the year. But those are the two things that they require. Nectar turned into honey and pollen is turned into bee bread. And then in the hive, the nurse bees in the hive, the newly emerged bees in the hive, become nurses. They eat this pollen and in doing so, their hypopharyngeal glands develop. These are little glands that are in their face and secrete something that looks like yogurt, called royal jelly, that they then feed to the larva. So this nectar and pollen that the bees bring back to the hive is really nothing more than the groceries in the hive. It's brought back to the hive and the nurse bees then turn that into food, called royal jelly, and that food then drives the hive. It's the royal jelly that really grows the hive, not the nectar and pollen. It's what it's turned into. Just like you, when you come home from the grocery store, you cook the food that you bring back. You don't eat that chicken raw. You cook it. And that's the same thing that the bees do. The bees cook it and turn it into royal jelly that makes it more palatable and more digestible by all the bees in the hive. Well, you're talking climate change here. And the way climate change is impacting the colonies is really twofold. One, the physical impact on the colony. And two, the impact on the flowers. And as I mentioned earlier, when bees forage nectar and pollen, they come from plants. Consider what a drought and heat stress does to the plants. It stresses the plants and limits their ability to produce nectar and pollen. And sometimes even severe droughts, the flowers and plants dry up and stop producing nectar and pollen. So that's critical for the bees. So how environmental change impacts bees is, one, the flowers are impacted and the forage that the bees have is impacted. And then two, just the environmental stress on the colony. Heat stress is really hard on the colony. The colony tries to maintain a brood nest temperature of about 92 degrees Fahrenheit. Sounds pretty warm, but when you get 30,000 little bodies in the hive, it's not hard to keep 92 degrees Fahrenheit in the hive. And when temperatures get too high, the bees will collect water, bring it back to the hive, and spread the water around inside the hive to evaporate. And they fan their wings and move the air through and evaporate that water, and that cools the hive. So what happens during heat stress is you have a lot of your fuel foragers that would be foraging for nectar and pollen switch over to being water foragers because they've got to cool the hive off. If the temperature in the hive gets too high, up into the high 90s, it'll start killing the larva. And the pupa in the hive. We'll talk about the three populations of bees in the hive later. But that's what heat stress can do to the hive. It impacts the ability of the bees to forage, but also they have to cool the hive down. And when it gets too hot, the queen will literally shut down and stop laying eggs. She becomes stressed and she won't lay eggs. And this break in egg production and brood rearing causes a break in the populations in the colony. And you've got to have this overlap of populations in the colony because if you don't, you're going to start having bigger stressors. We don't have young bees coming to the hive, and you haven't got the nurses, you haven't got the bees then to process the pollen and nectar into royal jelly, and you've got a critical situation and your colony will start to fail. What we can do about it is, if there's not enough pollen, not enough nectar coming into the hive, we can supplement their diet. We can give them sugar syrup, which will act as nectar, and the bees can then use it as their carbohydrate source. And we can feed them protein supplements, which is a pollen-like substance that people produce. And you mix it with sugar syrup, and it produces something along the lines of soft cookie dough that you put inside the hive, and the bees will eat it like they would natural pollen. You're essentially simulating bee bread. That's correct. It's something that looks like bee bread, and the bees will eat it, and it helps maintain the protein levels in their bodies that they need, and help the nurse bees produce more royal jelly that they can then feed to the larva, and feed to other bees as well, and maintain protein levels in the hive. Bees are really no different than humans. We need carbohydrates, and we need proteins and lipids in our diet, and the honey bees get their proteins and lipids from pollen, and when they can't get it, they get it from our supplements that we give them. What a quality protein supplement will do for the hive is it will, again, give the nurses the raw materials they need to produce royal jelly in their hypopharyngeal glands. It gives them the resources they need, and consequently then they can feed the larva and feed the queen, because if the queen's well-fed, she'll lay eggs. If she's not well-fed, she won't lay eggs. So this protein supplement not only impacts the larva and the nurse bees, but it impacts the queen, and if the queen is well-fed, she's producing good pheromones, and lots of good pheromones, and she can control the hive better. If she's not fed well, she stops laying eggs, she stops producing pheromones, she may be superseded, because the bees sense that there's a problem in the hive. Thinking they need a new queen, they may start superseded cells. So feeding can really help maintain a strong, healthy colony, as opposed to having a colony that's limping along or potentially being superseded or making a new queen. What's really interesting about honeybee colonies is that there are really three populations of bees in the hive. We all know about the three casts in the hive, the workers, the drones, the queen. But inside the hive, there's three populations of bees as well. The eggs, larva, and pupa, the immatures, that's the immature population. There's the house bees, the bees that spend, after a bee emerges from its cell, when it goes from egg to larva to pupa to adult, eventually it emerges from its cell. It becomes a newly emerged bee. It then takes on house duties, meaning that it could be a nurse bee, a wax worker, a propolis worker, a honey processor, or even an undertaker. There's even a group of bees in the hive that are undertakers and hygienic bees that go around cleaning up the hive. Then, of course, the last population in the hive are the field bees. These are distinct populations. This is a progression that all bees go through. The field bees, of course, are the pollen foragers, the nectar foragers, the propolis foragers, and the water foragers. Those are the jobs bees have in the field. Of course, there's the guard bees down at the entrance. All of those groups are very necessary in the hive, and we have to watch and maintain all of them as beekeepers. What I think is the most fascinating are the nurse bees, because they're the ones who really drive the hive. They're the ones who just newly emerge bees. They start eating pollen. As soon as they emerge from their cell, the first thing they do is start cleaning out other cells, and in the process, they start eating pollen. This causes the hypopharyngeal glands to develop. The development of those hypopharyngeal glands starts the secretion of royal jelly, and they start feeding the larva. They go around cell to cell, giving each larva a little taste of royal jelly. Each larva gets up to 250 meals a day. That's a lot of visits that each nurse bee has to make to those individual larvae. The larvae grow at an incredible rate. They increase their size at over 300% per day to the point where they can go from an egg to a mature larva in just four days, or seven days, considering the time it takes for the egg to develop. Seven days, it's a mature larva, and then goes into pupation. So those nurse bees are doing all of that. The interesting thing about it is when we put in a protein supplement, as we were talking about earlier, we put a protein supplement in the hive, the nurse bees feed on that, and by putting that half a kilo of protein supplement in the hive, we encourage the nurse bees to eat and eat and eat and produce more and more royal jelly to the point where they may have too much even for giving to the larva. In which case, they then say, well, geez, I'm still producing this. What do I do with it? So then they share it in the hive. The adult bees will get it. The field bees will get it. A field bee, a lot of people may not know, but a field bee cannot digest pollen. They bring pollen back to the hive, but they can't digest it. They no longer secrete the enzymes in their body to digest that pollen, but they can digest, they can assimilate royal jelly. So if the nurses are producing more royal jelly than they can use, it gets passed around in the hive, and even gets given to the field bees, which can digest it and helps extend their life. So it's surprising what just a little bit of protein supplement in the hive can do. We can increase bee longevity by up to 20%. Studies that were done at universities shown that field bees stay in the field longer with protein supplement in the hive than without. They die sooner. They literally wear themselves out, and without protein, they die. So this is what protein supplementation can do, and that's how the three populations in the hive are really benefited by some of these supplementations. Well, no, they don't treat all their pollen. It's not stored. You put it in the hive, and the bees go up and try to remove it because you're literally putting it in their walkway in the hive, and they want to clear out that walkway. So what they do is they go up and start to remove it, and they remove it one lick at a time. They recognize that it's sweet and proteinaceous, so they eat it like they would bee bread and consume it. And so this protein supplement will be consumed, but they don't have any means to store it in the hive like they would pollen. But it is consumed and turned into oral jelly just as pollen would be. It's really interesting. There were some really early attempts in supplemental feeding. In my readings over the years, I came across references in old texts. There was a fellow named Samuel Hartov in 1756 in the east coast of the United States in the Massachusetts area. He reported that adding bean flour to toast and soaking it with dark beer and adding sugar to it was a supplement that he would put in the hive, and the bees would eat it and did well on it. And in 1825, there was a report of molasses being mixed with milk and egg and fed to the hive to great benefit. 1852, Johannes Mering, who's also the father of foundation wax, he was one of the first gentlemen to figure out how to make foundation wax, but he would feed his bees with malt factory byproducts and saw great benefit to the bees. And in 1878, there was another report of pea flour being mixed with beer, yeast, and sugar and fed to the bees. But more recently, in the 1930s, Dr. Hydeck began the real scientific study of bee nutrition and the essentials of supplementing hives, and he came up with a diet called the Hydeck diet, which was largely brewer's yeast, expeller-pressed soy flour, and a little bit of milk and sugar, powder of milk and sugar. I think beekeepers have a very strong propensity to beer. Yeah. But the brewer's yeast is the common theme there, I think is what you're seeing. In the 1950s, there was, you know, DeGroote identified the 10 essential amino acids that are required by bees. And in the 1970s, Elton Herbert at the USDA in Beltsville, Maryland, did a lot of work on, he and Shimanuki did a lot of work on honeybee nutrition and nutritional elements, proteins, lipids, minerals, all that kind of stuff. And Elton was a great researcher in honeybee nutrition, and he was lost all too early to us as scientists. Now, I don't think, just like all pollens are not the same, I don't think all supplemental feeds are the same. There are certain things, you know, I talked earlier about the Hydeck diet, and Hydeck had used soy flour in his diet. And soy flour is beneficial for the bees. I mean, it has a lot of good essential amino acids and branched-chain amino acids that are beneficial to the bees. But unfortunately, unless it's treated properly and baked properly, the anti-feeding agents in soy can be a problem. I mean, the Chinese figured this out 5,000 years ago, how to process soy and increase its digestibility. Soy has something called trypsin inhibitors that inhibit the body from absorbing the protein that they get from the soy. And so unless the trypsin inhibitors are inactivated, you're feeding the bees something that's pretty much empty protein for them because they can't digest it. And there's something else in soy that's not really great for bees, and that's the stachyose and raffinose, two sugars that in quantity can be toxic to bees. So I generally try to stay away from a lot of soy products in the hive because of the trypsin inhibitors and the stachyose and raffinose. The other thing that I try to stay away from in the hive are animal products. Bees are not carnivores, and I don't think we should try to turn them into carnivores. There have been some diets developed in the United States that use chicken blood and other things, and I just can't imagine that. But it's not safe for the bees, but it's also the bees don't find it very palatable. The other thing that has been used and is being used in some diets are egg products. And while the yolk has a lot of beneficial components for the bees, the whites, the albumin, is largely undigestible by the bees. And to jack up the protein levels in diets, some people will put egg into their product to increase the protein levels to make it look like a high protein. But unless the bees can digest it, it doesn't do any good. We really don't need to get into protein wars. Really, the protein levels bees need in a finished protein supplement is between, when it goes into the hive, would be between 12 and 18 percent, maybe as high as 22 percent. But higher than that, the bees really can't get much benefit out of it. I stay away from animal products, and I'm leery of products that claim to be high protein, because the bees really don't need it. There's a balance between carbohydrates and protein that's essential for the bees, and the protein needs to be between 12 and 18 percent. It's really optimal. What is feeding your bees and supplementing your bees? Feeding your bees and supplementing your bees, of course, is something that you will recognize as a beekeeper going into your hive. And if they're not getting the natural resources into the hive that you see that they need, I always tell my students to, as they go through the hive, look for the pollen, look for the honey that's available, look at the brood population. And when you see that you're not getting everything that you need in the hive, then, yes, it's time to supplement. That would mean putting in protein patty and putting in some sugar syrup if they need it, because that helps keep things going. And what that does for your colony is immeasurable, because a healthy colony is able to withstand so much that a stressed colony cannot withstand. Viruses, for instance. There's over 27 different viruses now that attack our bees. And a bee that is well-fed and well-nourished has a higher immune response and can withstand these viruses, whereas bees that are stressed cannot. Just like you and I, if we get on an airplane and we've been working really hard and we're stressed and we didn't get much sleep, and somebody sitting next to us sneezes, we know we're going to get that cold. But if you've been well-rested and you're well-fed and feeling good, you'll be able to resist that cold from that passenger next to you. Bees are just the same way. And you have to think about all the challenges that bees have in the environment, going from flower to flower and contacting other bees and the density of bees in the hive. Having a good immune response is very important. The other thing that feeding can do is it helps ensure the proper development and adequate development of the larvae in the hive. A larva that is poorly fed takes longer to go through its development time. It doesn't happen in 21 days as the optimal time. It can take even longer. And the longer the period that larva spends as a larva in pupa, the more susceptible it is to other pathogens and products in the hive. So ensuring good nutrition helps the hive develop as it should. But is feeding a seasonal thing? No, it's a management tool. It's something that helps you manage the populations in your colony. At the time of year when you need it, no matter what season it is. In the spring, building up winter-stressed colonies, getting your bees ready for a nectar flow, optimizing your populations to make your squats. In the summer, if your colonies are drought-stressed or their nectar flows are insufficient, you can manage your population by feeding. And then in the fall, we look at getting our bees ready for winter with supplemental feeding. There's no better way to make fat bees than to feed supplements and build up that population, build up those vitaligenin stores in the bee's body, get them ready for winter. And then winter also, we've had such inconsistent winters lately that it gets warm, it gets cold, it gets warm, it gets cold. What that does is it causes the bees to break in the brood nest and stresses the bees out. A little amount of protein in a candy or in a patty in the hive can help support the bees during those stressed times. How can I help? Okay, well, that's a very good question. The best thing to do with a product, a protein supplement, is to get it as close to the brood nest as possible because it's the nurses who use that then to turn it into royal jelly to feed the larva. How do you know if it's working? One is palatability. Are the bees able to eat it? Just because the bees eat it doesn't necessarily mean that it's good for them. A high-sugar patty, the bees will consume it very quickly, but it doesn't necessarily affect the brood the way you want it to. For instance, give your children a high-sugar cereal. They'll consume it quickly, but it's good for them. In the hive, a product should be consumed readily, but also you should see the impact of the product on the hive. In other words, you should see an improvement in larva, big, fat, plump larva that are well-fed, even distribution of eggs, larva, pupa in the hive because that means you're not losing any one different population in the hive. You're looking for effect and you're looking for consumption. What a great question. Advice to new beekeepers. As much time as you can spend in your hive is important. I know they say not to distribute your bees too much, but as a new beekeeper, you really need to learn in your hive and learn to know your bees. Each hive will take on its own personality, and you'll soon learn to recognize those personalities. I used to tell my students that when you're a beekeeper, you need to use all of your senses. When you go into the hive, the first thing you do when you take the cover off, there's a puff of air that comes up off the hive, and you want to smell that. That will tell you a lot about the health of the colony right there, but also to hear the hive and to see the behavior of the bees on the top bars. I guess what I would tell new beekeepers is to start experiencing their colony as much as they can and enjoying it because beekeeping is a joy. It's the happiest hours of my days when I can go out and be with my bees or have a cup of coffee with them in the morning. Even just watching them at the entrance, I can see and learn a lot from them. The advice I would give new beekeepers is be inquisitive, read as much as you can, talk to other beekeepers, but more than anything, get in the hive and observe the sights, the smells, the behaviors. All of those things in the hive will educate you over time. I've been doing this for over 50 years, and my bees still teach me lessons every day when I go in because I'm there and I'm present in the hive. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Let's talk a little more in depth in a future podcast. What do you say?