April 2010 363

Abstract: We discuss proteins, amino acids,honey bee nutrition, pollen digestion byhoney bees, and introduce a new product,Amino-B Booster™. The new product is aProprietary Apiary Blend of selected aminoacids that provides all necessary nutritionfor assimilation of protein. Amino-BBooster™ is added to sucrose sugar syrupwith Honey-B-Healthy® (HBH) and fed tobees at times when pollen is not availableor pollen protein is deficient. Free aminoacids are rapidly absorbed in the midgutand delivered to growing tissues. Severalbenefits to honey bees and to beekeepersare listed.Key words – Amino-B Booster™, aminoacids, proteins, pollen, honey bee nutrition,Honey-B-Healthy®.

Honey bees need protein in their dietfor production of cuticle, muscle,glands, cell walls, enzymes, etc. The

bees obtain protein by digesting pollengrains in the midgut. Different pollen types

have different amounts of protein (Bell et al.1983; De Groot 1953; Honeybee Australis2010; Oliver 2010; Somerville 2005; Stace1996; Wikipedia 2010).

Pollens relatively rich in protein are thoseplants that are insect or bee-pollinated: dan-delions, apples and other fruit trees, clovers,alfalfa, false indigo, and many other plants.Even some of these may be deficient in oneor more essential amino acids.

Pollens poor in protein are most grasses,sedges, conifers, ragweeds, and other plantsthat have wind as a pollenizing agent. Thesewill not support growth of honey bees.

In all cases, the needed protein is digestedin the honey bee midgut. When eatingpollen, the bees must secrete enzymes intothe midgut lumen; these must then penetratethe tough pollen grains where the variousproteins (if present) are digested into smallerfragments called peptides and polypeptidesuntil finally, the protein is digested to freeamino acids. These small molecules are thenable to be absorbed by the midgut cellswhere they quickly enter the hemolymph,or are transferred to various hemocytes[blood cells] which circulate throughout thebody, carrying the needed amino acids togrowing tissues, glands, muscles, etc. Thetough pollen grains often limit the amountof the pollen that can be digested (Bell et al.

1983) to a fraction of that which may bepresent. Bees need a wide variety of pollensin order to insure adequate nutrition(Somerville 2005).

The following 21 amino acids (AA) arefound in most animals and honey bees. Es-sential AA [must be in the diet]: isoleucine,leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine,threonine, tryptophan and valine. Nonessen-tial AA (* = essential in some situations):alanine, asparaginine, aspartic acid, cys-teine*, glutamic acid, glutamine*, glycine*,proline*, selenocysteine*, serine*, tyrosine,arginine and histidine. The nonessential AAcan be produced in the bees by secondarymetabolism from the eight essential AA(Wikipedia.org 2010). In many pollens inAustralia, isoleucine is a limiting aminoacid; de Groot found that the threshold ofgood development of bees requires a mini-mum of 4mg isoleucine per 16 mg protein(De Groot 1953, Somerville 2005, Stace1996). In our opinion, the availability of freeamino acids in the diet circumvents this lim-itation.

Feeding “Amino-B Booster™” to HoneyBees.

We began experimenting with a propri-etary free amino acid blend, “Amino-BBooster™”, in late January 2009. The blend

Figure 1. Three half quarts of feeding mixes were placed onthe top of a colony late December, 2008. Within a shorttime many bees were clustered on the HBH/Amino-BBooster™ jar on the right with only a few bees on theAmino-B Booster™ mix in the center and HBH mix on theleft.

Figure 2. Brood raised in early February, 2009, in Cumber-land MD, from the feeding of Amino-B Booster™ in su-crose sugar syrup (1:1) with Honey-B-Healthy®. The aminojelly is stored in a band around the brood. Inset shows aclose-up of the amino jelly which stays liquid and is notcapped.

Proteins, Honey Bee Nutritionand Amino-B Booster™

by JAMES W. AMRINE, JR.1 and ROBERT C. NOEL2

1. Division of Plant and Soil Sciences, West Vir-ginia University, PO Box 6108, Morgantown,WV 26506, U.S.A. email: jamrine@wvu.edu

2. 108 Blackiston Ave, Cumberland, MD 21502,U.S.A. email: bob@honeybhealthy.com

American Bee Journal364

contains 20 amino acids including all of theessential amino acids and most of the non-essential amino acids.

Ingesting free amino acids with Honey-B-Healthy® in sucrose sugar syrup providesa distinct set of advantages to the honeybees.

1. The bees do not need to secrete en-zymes into the midgut to digest protein.

2. Pollen grains with their tough exinesdo not need to be penetrated to obtain theprotein.

3. The free amino acids are absorbed im-mediately by the midgut cells.

4. The ratio of amino acids is not critical;the bees immediately acquire and absorb theamino acids they need. Proteins in pollenmust have specific AA in minimum levelsto allow adequate digestion of the proteinand assimilation of the needed AA (Stace1996). Free AA in the diet circumvents thisrestriction.

Bees flocked to the Amino-B Booster™& HBH sugar syrup feeders (Figure 1) ingreater numbers than to any other syrup wehave tested. The syrup is rapidly convertedby the bees into ‘amino jelly’ and storedwith the HBH which acts as a preservativeplus providing the benefits of HBH. Theamino jelly is placed in cells in the pollen-cell zone of brood frames (Figure 2). Theamino jelly is then available in the broodnest for feeding larvae, newly emerged beesand other adults as needed.

Protein is cycled in worker bees as fol-lows: first, to the food glands in the head:the mandibular and hypopharyngeal glands(young nurse bees, ages 1 d to ~12 days,need the protein to produce the rich secre-tions for bee milk and royal jelly). Then, tothe 8 wax glands in the abdominal sternites,which increase in size and sequester proteinto make the many enzymes in order to rap-idly secrete high quality wax. The protein is

then broken down to free amino acids andmoved to the flight muscles for the foragingbees. All of these transfers of protein requireconsiderable secondary metabolism to con-vert some of the old proteins to amino acidsfor transport. This overall plan can be re-versed, depending on the needs of thecolony.

By providing free amino acids in Amino-B Booster™, all of these processes can beimproved and accelerated: food glands cantheoretically grow larger and secrete richerproteins and vitellogenin. Wax glands cangrow more quickly as amino acids are pro-vided direct from the diet and need not berapidly sequestered from the food glands.Flight muscles can grow more rapidly inbees > 18 days old for the same reason.

Our experiments show that feedingAmino-B Booster™ in early spring, duringdearth and in the fall leads to immediatebrood production in the hive. This can be agood thing if you are moving bees into earlypollination contracts or preparing for honeyproduction from plants that have an earlybloom, such as the Autumn Olive (Elaeag-nus umbellata Thunb., Elaeagnaceae) inWV.

Brood production at the wrong time canstress hives during severe winters or stresshives that are in weakened condition with-out sufficient honey stores. Increased broodproduction requires a great increase inhoney consumption in order to maintain the94° F (34° C) degree brood temperature. Forthis reason, we recommend that Amino-BBooster™ not be used after September inmost cases, unless you are preparing beesfor movement into almonds and/or otherearly crops in February or March, and yourbees have sufficient honey to support thehigher brood temperatures.

Rapid increase of brood production willencourage swarm production by many

colonies; beekeepers need to be ready tocontrol swarming or be ready to producenucs and make divisions to keep up with therapid increase in bee populations.

Autumn bees go into winter with up to67% stored protein and vitellogenin in thefat body, and draw on this body-protein dur-ing winter stress and to raise late winterbrood if needed when there is poor, low orno pollen stores in the hive. They can con-sume body-protein to create royal jelly andbee milk to feed their brood. “The level ofbody protein in adult bees ranges from 21%to 67% in direct relationship to the quantityand composition of available pollen proteinand work load imposed by reproduction andhoney collection” (Kleinschmidt and Kon-dos 1977).

In late January of 2009, all pollen was re-moved from four colonies (Figure 2) andthey were fed HBH/ Amino-B Booster™syrup and we were amazed to see healthybrood raised from this one test before learn-ing about stored body protein and Amino-BBooster™ being a source of protein; not acomplete diet. More research needs to bedone to see if Amino-B Booster™ will be aviable product for beekeepers, especiallycommercial beekeepers preparing for al-mond pollination who can possibly doubletheir colony sizes on syrup feedings alone.And for queen breeders who need an earlyamino acid jump-start in order to producehealthy, hardy queens. The bees store theamino jelly as they do pollen (see Figure 2top left).

On Oct. 10, 2009 all of our colonies werevoid of brood except for the four that werefed Amino-B Booster™; we removed thefeeding jars on this date. On Oct. 28 webegan to feed one colony not previously fedAmino-B Booster™. On Nov. 09 we foundbrood; and much more brood on Nov. 29(Figure 3) and continually through Decem-

Figure 3. Brood produced in late October and November2009 as a result of feeding of Amino-B Booster™ in sucrosesugar syrup (1:1) in Cumberland, MD; date of photographis 29 Nov 2009. Lower right inset shows bees covering thebrood frame taken from the hive. The center frame showsbrood after bees are shaken off. Upper left inset is a close-up of the brood and bees.

Figure 4. On a warm day in Feb. 2009 (Cumberland, MD)the bees were observed carrying pollen (inset) and a cellwith a bit of pollen was found. The amino jelly was storedin cells where pollen is typically stored, in a band aroundthe brood.

April 2010 365

ber, 2009, and January, 2010. The bees hada few frames of brood all winter in thisAmino-B Booster™ fed colony. This wasonly a test and is not recommended to doprior to long winter clustering.

Figure 4. On a warm day in Feb. 2009the bees were observed carrying pollen(inset) and a cell with a bit of pollen wasfound. After four days of the bees not fly-ing, Feb. 16, the small bit of pollen wasgone: consumed by the bees. This obser-vation proves that the bees, even thoughfeeding on HBH/Amino-B Booster™syrups, will still gather pollen; their natu-ral protein supply. Therefore, theHBH/Amino-B Booster™ feeding doesnot appear to interfere with the bees nor-mal nectar or pollen gathering.

Amino-B Booster™ is being released in2010 on a limited basis [test market byDadant & Sons].

References:Bell R.R., Thornber E.J., Seet J.L.L.,

Groves M.T., Ho N.P., & Bell D.T.(1983). Composition and protein qualityof honeybee-collected pollen of Eucalyp-tus marginata and Eucalyptus calophylla.J. Nutrition 113: 2479 - 2484.

De Groot A.P. (1953). Protein and AminoAcid Requirements of the Honey bee(Apis mellifera). Physiologia Comparataet d’Ecologia Vol. 3: 197-285.

Kleinschmidt G. and Kondos A.C. (1976).The influence of crude protein levels oncolony production. Australasian Bee-keeper 78: 36-93.

Kleinschmidt and Kondos. (1977). The ef-fect of dietary protein on colony perform-ance. Proc. 26th Int. Cong. Apic.,Adelaide (Apimondia).

Honeybee Australis. 2010. NUTRI-TIONAL REQUIREMENTS OFHONEY BEES. http://www.honeybee.com.au/Library/pollen/nutrition.html; ac-cessed, 4 Feb 2010.

Oliver R. 2007. Fat Bees Part 1 AmericanBee Journal

Oliver R. 2010. Fat Bees. Part 2.http://www.scientificbeekeeping.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35 accessed, 4 Feb 2010.

Somerville D. (2005). Fat Bees SkinnyBees: - a manual on honey bee nutritionfor beekeepers. Rural Industries Re-search and Development Corporation.NSW Dept. Primary Industries. Goul-burn, NSW, Australia. ISBN 1 74151 1526 https://rirdc.infoservices.com.au/downloads/05-054.pdf

Stace P. (1996). Protein content and aminoacid profiles of honey bee collected pol-lens.

http://www.honeybee.com.au/Library/Pollenindex.html ISBN 0-7310-2867-8 Bees‘N Trees Consultants, NSW Australia2480.

Wikipedia. 2010. Provides detailed infor-mation on amino acids and proteins,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acids, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteins;accessed 8 Feb 2010.

HEITKAM’S HONEY BEESQuality Queens Dependable Service

“Members of American Beekeeping Federation”

WE’RE SELECTING FOR HYGIENIC BEHAVIOR

Call or Write (530) 865-9562

4700 First Ave., Orland, CA 95963FAX (530) 865-7839

Tony Homan Apiaries

MARKING & CLIPPING $1.00 EA.518 CR 520

Shannon, MS 38868662-767-3880 662-401-3254

Fax 662-767-3490

Breeder ofCaucasian & Italian Queens

5-24 $15.00

25-49$14.00

50-UP$13.00

PRICES ARE PLUS SHIPPING

Plastics PackagingConcept

12 oz. Capacity In AnAngel Shaped ContainerJohn 3:16 engraved onthe back - white capsavailable separately &

custom labels.Now Available in Clear

PlasticP.O. Box 617

Garden City, MO 64747816.862.8703 or

FAX 816.862.8702www.ppc3.com