Laurence Edmonds compares three pollen patties: Ultra Bee has 60% crude protein, Bee Pro guarantees 12%, and Candi Pollen Gold contains only 1.3% pollen and is mostly sugar. He calls Candi misleading marketing and recommends Ultra Bee for spring feeding, despite the higher cost.
Hi, I'm Laurence Edmonds from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping and another episode of Bite Size Bees. So in this video, I'm going to review 3 really popular pollen patties. I use the term pollen patties quite loosely. So we've got the Ultra Bee Pollen Patty, ready-made from Bee Equipment. We've got the Bee Pro Pollen Patty, pre-made from Bee Equipment. And then Cande Pollen Gold. So all I'm gonna do in this video is I'm gonna give you a breakdown of the constituent products for each of these separate patties. Later on in the year, we're gonna do a separate video and I'm gonna put each of these patties onto a single colony and I'm gonna see which one they prefer. Right, so we'll get on with the review then. We'll start with the Ultra Bee. Now on the packaging here, it says that the Ultra Bee has 60% crude protein. That's the figure that you're looking for. You want to see how much protein is in these patties. The Ultra Bee's got 60%, 6-0%. Moving on to the Bee Pro patties. Now, the ready-made formulation of the patties has a guaranteed minimum protein content of 12%. So you can see already there's a massive, massive difference between the 2 different pollen patties that are available here. Let's move on to the Candi-Pollen Gold though. And what a lovely color that is, must have loads and loads of pollen in there. The Candy Pelin Gold has 1.3% pollen. So this is the main reason for me doing this video. Please don't be tricked into buying this as a protein patty for your bees. This is a sugar fondant. This is good for giving the bees carbohydrates. It's got barely any protein in there whatsoever. It's definitely not got enough to do any difference to the spring buildup of your colonies. If you wanted me to give you a recommendation, I have used all 3 of these products and I've done a little bit of testing, and I can safely say by far and away the best pollen patty on the UK market without a shadow of a doubt is the Ultra Bee. Now I mix up my own Ultra Bee patties, I have done previously. I probably haven't got time for that this year, and I'm going down a slightly different method this year, so I'm not going to be doing too much stimulative feeding with either syrup or patties at the beginning of the year, but without a doubt Ultra Bee is by far and away the highest protein content and it's what the bees prefer. So if you're looking at doing any sort of stimulative feeding or protein patty feeding going into the spring, don't be put off by the additional cost of the Ultra Bee. The Ultra Bee is by far and away the best protein patty on the market because it's got the highest protein content. So that's it for the video. I've been wanting to do that one for ages because I see so many people feeding Candy Pelin Gold saying I've got my pollen patties on and it's just not a pollen patty. That is barely any better than Baco fondant. In my view, that is Baco's fondant with a little bit of yellow food coloring in there. So you can disregard this product as a pollen patty. If you're going to go and buy something like this, just go down and buy one of the cheap proprietary fondants, or even better than that, just go and buy some cheap Baco fondant. So I hope you enjoyed the video. I hope you found this one useful, trying to save you a little bit of money here. So don't get conned into some of the beekeeping snake oil products that are out there. Go for the good, high-quality protein patties and you'll do your bees the world of good. So thanks for watching. Please hit the subscribe button. Please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.
