The Tucson Bee Diet (MegaBee) will soon be available in Canada. Together with the standard Global formula with or without pollen, patties made with BeePro (either by Global or by Mann Lake), Feedbee patties, and now MegaBee patties, we need some real world comparative tests to see how best to invest our feed budget.
There are three basic questions, IMO, that research needs top answer better, and they are:
1.) Which diet is the most effective in terms of
a.) bee health, brood rearing, wintering success, etc. and
b.) honey production.
and
2.) How much feed pays off. At what point is there no improvement in bee performance. In other words are we feeding too little, just right, or not enough?
3.) When should we feed? Some recent tests were run with the patties going on late and in limited amounts. The results were good, BUT what would have been the results if they had been fed earlier, when beekeepers normally feed or continued right until honey flow or pollination?
We need to run a large-scale test using 150 to 200 hives, minimum, to answer these questions, and the tests need to be run by someone with no distractions from that task. The test is easy emough to run, but it is a big job that requires a knowledgeable beekeeper's full attention.
My earliest mention to friends has indicated that there is no problem getting hives designated for the tests, and having the beekeepers' help to do the required feeding according to instruction. Trucks, labour, feed, etc. would be forthcoming, but what is harder to find so far at least is the cash to pay ther researcher's time and expenses. If I were to do it, my account would be $20,000 beyond the aformentioned items, just to make it worth my while, since the job would take up the better part of three months, plus time before and after. Maybe someone else could do it cheaper and better? I don't know. So far, I have been told that I could dig up a few thousand here and a few thousand there, maybe totaling $9,000. I am sure there may be more, or maybe a few big bekeepers can see how this job if done right could make them many thousands within a year or two, plus save them on over or under-feeding or choosing the wrong patties. I don't know.
Anyhow, I'm running the flag up the pole to see who salutes. I know that my friends have stood up to be counted and put their money into good ideas in the past. Is this a good enough idea to attract some enough cash to go this coming spring?
As I see it, I'd like to do the test in a way that never has been done before. Everything would be on a dedicated website and open to all viewers. When the brood is counted, it would be by photograph and each and every frame would be shown on the web and the ongoing results would be available for all to see and comment. That way everyone can see the whole thing unfold and contribute their personal wisdom in time that mistakes can be rectified, not find out months later that mistakes were made that nulify the results and that an opportunity and thousands of dollars were wasted.
It seems that much of the time we never see what happens to hives that are pulled out of experiments or what significant exceptions may occur. All we see is nice neat charts that may conceal what might have been a very messy job.
At any rate, this, to me seems a test that needs to be run, run properly, and soon. Beekeepers need to know how MegaBee and the newest formulation of FeedBee stack up against the latest versions of BeePro and plain old soy and yeast Global patties.
A great deal of money is going into patties and each beekeeper needs to know in his or her own case if it is enough or too much. We need to know if the premium prices of FeedBee, MegaBee and Beepro are justified when compared to soy and yeast.
There is some good anecdotal reason to think that some of these could be duds or bad value, and the amazing claims for Megabee, the new kid on the block, should be tested. If it is everything that Gordy claims, it will be an important new competitior. If not, we need to know.
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