Standard
Global Patties are a time-tested yeast/soy/sugar formula
with bee pollen*
and are available in several formulations.
Recently, Dr. Joe
Latshaw and his father concluded that this successful and widely-accepted
bee diet can be enhanced by adding selected fats, vitamins and
minerals, and has developed a
Vitamin & Mineral Supplement especially for standard
yeast/soy bee diets. After preliminary
tests, Global is now including this vitamin, mineral and
lipid supplement product in all future
production at no additional cost to the beekeeper.
* All pollen used in Global
Patties is irradiated to government specifications to
prevent the risk of bee disease.
For
more details, please see the order forms:
Canada|USA
|World.
Global also makes patties to your own
specifications, on special order, using any ingredients
you wish to request or to supply.
Email Mike to discuss arrangements.
Here is what Dr.
Latshaw says about his product:
My dad and I have been
working on the supplement for the past 4-5 years. My dad is
an animal research nutritionist. It started with a
conversation about artificial bee diets and looking at what
diets are currently used in the industry. We wanted to
develop a nutritional profile for current diets and look at
the cost as well. After a review of the literature, we
decided to start from scratch with our own analysis and
formulations. We then began to develop an artificial diet
with our analysis of natural pollen samples. Most artificial
diets focus on protein levels, but there is much more to a
diet than protein. Our initial goal was to develop a
complete diet for the market, which we did. However, there
are a lot of commercial beekeepers mixing their own diets.
While listening to a presentation by Dave Mendes I thought,
why not market the vitamin and mineral portion of our diet
as that would have much broader appeal and it was something
we already worked out for the complete formulation. We set
out to match the nutritional profile of natural pollen by
adding our vitamin and mineral supplement to artificial
diets and our current research is focusing on enhancing the
formulation by "tweaking" ratios and filling in the gaps
where we can actually improve upon natural pollen.
Our work is ongoing but we feel that we have a very cost
effective solution for beekeepers to meet the nutritional
needs of their bees. Our vitamin and mineral supplement is
formulated at 5lbs of supplement for every ton of bee
supplement, on a dry matter basis. That works out to about 2
cents per patty to help meet nutritional needs.
