Bee Bread
nordicfoodlab.org
nordicfoodlab.org
> But the bees do not consume their pollen fresh. Instead, they take it into the hive and pack the granules into empty comb cells, mixing them with nectar and digestive fluids and sealing the cell with a drop of honey. Once processed in this way, the pollen remains stable indefinitely. Beekeepers call this form of pollen ‘perga’ or ‘bee bread’.
This implies it's their food.
Given the recent concerns with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder, is this unusual delicacy worth the potential environmental damages? (I don't mean that rhetorically; It's an actual question.)
In fact, the very first sentence of the Wikipedia articles says "Colony collapse disorder is the phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind ... plenty of food..."
> we don't really understand colony collapse disorder
Look at the bee expert here. ;)
But really, the parent post didn't make a direct connection to the two. More of an implication of a combination of the two being pretty disastrous.
Langstroth Hive (that I use): https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Langstroth_hive
Top-bar Hive: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Horizontal_top-bar_hive
There are also less popular choices: - Warré - WBC - Long box hive
Here's a list by Wikipedia: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Beehive
Beekeeping (I can only speak as a hobbyist) is lots of fun... and some stress :). Highly recommended!
Honey is the overwinter food; beekeepers typically try to leave the bees about 80 lbs, depending on the climate. Pollen is much more important for raising new bees -- removing it will limit the growth of the hive, which in some species is actually desirable. A hive which grows too much is prone to swarming, which beekeepers typically avoid. They will instead save the pollen for the spring -- if you feed the bees pollen after it has begun to warm but before there are flowers in bloom, it will help them build their population back up earlier and they will be at full strength for the early nectar flows.
Calling this stealing speaks more about humans than it does of bees. Why do we view bees as selfish? Another, more charitable view, is that the bees willingly share with humans.
But they sting, you say. Bees only sting if you move rapidly, destroy their home or you catch them on a bad day, like right before a storm. On sunny days I have successfully harvested honey from hives, in normal street clothes, with zero stings simply by moving carefully and staying calm.
So why do we view bees as selfish creatures? Because we are selfish.
In truth, I believe that life has a spiritual dimension, that my life has purpose, blah blah blah, but I find it useful on occasion to temporarily 'forget' that I believe such things.
In a general sense, liking life forms that don't actively threaten us, just enjoying there being other life, should be useful for all life, since all life kind of depends on the "tapestry of life" which sustains it as well. Doesn't mean it is so, but it wouldn't surprise me. I say this a lot but that's kind of my point, "why should this be ruled out, why would that be surprising", not so much making a positive claim as debating an implied negative one.
In this [1] thread, someone linked the concept of biophilia, and I had to think of this discussion as well: if we allow for humans liking life "just because" or "for some reason", we should allow for that in animals, too.
Bees don't really have a good rule for "giant, landscape-sized creature carefully disassembling hive -> sting that asshole". It's just not something a bee needs to have a rule for. They do essentially have a rule for "giant animal destroying the hive -> sting that asshole", but that's because smashing a hive also smashes some bees, and they do have a rule for "smell a smashed bee -> go freakin' nuts". So the rules for barefoot beekeeping boil down to "be extremely careful and don't squish any bees".
Most of the bees' defenses are actually focused on other insects, especially other bees. Robbing by other bees is a much bigger threat than robbing by the landscape. A bee's sting is only fatal to the bee when it stings something like a human, and its stinger gets stuck in our skin. When a bee stings another bee or other insect, it can sting as many times as it likes. So it's more of a surprise to the bee when stinging us proves fatal, than some sort of altruistic suicide mission for the greater good of the hive.
Ownership is not a physical property of the world, it exists in the minds of people. The bees almost certainly have no notion of ownership, so saying that "we know it is not ours" speaks more about humans than it does of bees.
This discusses some species of bees defending mating territories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territory_(animal)
/and my mother was an entomologist, so I'm perfectly happy with allusions between humans/insects even if most polite/modern society find such offensive...
From a commercial beekeeping perspective "colony collapse disorder" is nothing but a recent news fad. There are cycles of different problems for decades, but I doubt there is something extraordinary about the current state of beekeeping.
Killing the makers of your livelihood and dealing with catastrophic problems is usually known as "farming".
If you don't winter your bees, you have to kill them somehow. And most beekeepers with any kind of scale do not have a way to overwinter.
Overwintering has since become more popular because of diseases and queen availability, but judging by the existence of the queen industry I'd guess many are still killing their bees.
I'm not old enough to talk about beekeeping in the '70s and '80s, but our losses are much more important now than 10-15 years ago.
CCD is probably a combination of various pressures such as Varroa mites, pesticides, mono-culturing, destruction of natural resources, etc. But these days, one has to work (often hard) to get one's colonies survive... unlike before, when you could let them do their thing most of the time.
"The 2014 numbers, which came out earlier this year, show that the number of managed colonies -- that is, commercial honey-producing bee colonies managed by human beekeepers -- is now the highest it's been in 20 years." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/07/23/call-...
The article argues that CCD has made beekeeping more expensive, which is a cost passed onto consumers in the form of more expensive honey, but beekeepers have found ways to keep their colonies from disappearing.
This in turn means that you've got to do a lot more splits (where you create a new hive by splitting an old hive into two, and either inducing them to produce a queen or adding a carefully-bred queen yourself) or buying new packages of bees from someone who has already done this for you. A new hive usually needs a year to get up to full strength -- you can occasionally take a little bit off a new hive, but not much, and most beekeepers don't even risk it.
As you say, 25-50% failure rates are expensive but currently within the range of what can be replaced; new packages of bees currently cost around $100-150 on the east coast, but aren't really hard to find. I'm somewhat curious how high of a failure rate can be sustained. It pretty much depends on how many splits you can generate a year starting from a single hive, which isn't a number I'm familiar with.
You could find this map interesting:
http://www.blereamiedesabeilles.fr/wp-content/uploads/2014/1...
Veal is meat from calves that are only weeks old, anywhere from a few weeks to about 8 months old. There's varied opinions on if this is acceptable animal welfare.
But basically, calves are a byproduct of milk production.
Anyone know why it works?
You did not describe anything that resembles immunotherapy. Immunotherapy takes a very long time (months to over a year) before you start to notice an improvement in symptoms and requires year round treatment, not just during allergy season. After 3-5 years treatment is discontinued.
Additionally, a general fault of immunotherapy for allergy is that we tend to present the allergen in a manner distinct from its biological presentation - e.g., oral presentation of inhaled allergens. Since we have different mucosa-associated lymphoid tissues throughout the body, and since they do react differently, generally you're not going to get a great response to oral administration of a non-oral allergen (e.g., something you'd normally inhale, like pollen).
You can also see an allergist for actual immunotherapy but you have to commit to getting regular shots (decreasing in frequency) for a few years which can be pretty inconvenient especially because you must stay at the office for a half hour afterwards to make sure there was no life threatening reaction... but it is the only thing that could actually cure you of allergies after the immunotherapy is stopped.
> Among allergy sufferers, there is a widespread belief that locally produced honey can alleviate symptoms. . .when University of Connecticut Health Center researchers did a test, they found that the honey had no such effect.
I'd prefer that Bee Bread became more mainstream so that it could be bought from local producers who'd respond to that demand. Bee bread from the Altai mountains in Siberia is double the price of the eastern European BB.
Ideally, BB from New Zealand would be best, but I couldn't find it. Eg Manuka.
You should actually be worried about pesticides which kills bees and poisons bee honey and bread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide_toxicity_to_bees
How much this actually matters, I'm personally skeptical of, but it's a boon touted loudly and widely by all fans of fermented products who feel their food choices need to be justified by more than "it tastes good."
Seriously though, I've never heard of the last name "Pollen", is there any chance that it's pseudonym?
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nordicfoodlab.org
Thanks for sharing though, i had missed it the last time around. :) :)
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