Monday, August 3, 2009

Bee Pollen - Natures Completely Balanced Food

My favorite bee pollen source is Peggy's Pollen, a natural US product, e-mail Diane at dianer57@gmail.com or call 320-2434330. If you call, please remember to ask for Diane as Peggy is Diane's Daughter.

National Public Radio (NPR) reported recently that 90% of all bee pollen sold in the US is from China. After the publicity of tainted products from China, I read labels and am selective in my purchases.


Beautiful Multicolored Peggy's Pollen Granules demonstrates that the bees collected it from a variety of plants and suggest better nutritional value!

To preserve it nutritional value, I store some in the refrigerator for daily use and the rest is stored in the freezer.


When Do You Feed Bee Pollen?

I use bee pollen for specific purposes throughout the year. It is very nutritious being 25% protein by weight and contains all 22 essential amino acids plus numerous vitamins, major minerals, micro-nutrients, enzymes and co-enzymes, fatty acids, pigments-xanthophyll and carotene, and some carbohydrates calories but not so many to be fattening.

All year round, it is good to offer bee pollen free choice to any thin bird or one that just is not up to par or ones that are out of condition. Many times I have seen these canaries enthusiastically eat bee pollen even when seed and other foods were difficult for them to eat. On most occasions their health or condition returned and they again ate a normal diet like the rest of the flock.

During molting, it is good nutrition for molting birds to meet their nutritional challenges but also it is good because of its yellow pigments that help to color yellow feathers. Borders are given bee pollen free choice during the molt. But because of the yellow pigments bee pollen contains, I do not feed it to red ground potential show birds.

It is a very good conditioner for breeding and consistently helps improve fertility rates. It is wonderful for weaning birds as they quickly begin eating pollen even before they learn to eat egg food!

Bee pollen is a strong song stimulator. With the German rollers, we compete in the equivalent of an adolescent boys song and not a breeding type song. A little bee pollen mixed in with rape, sunflower pieces, and thistle seed but no more than once a week in small amounts is OK even for rollers until they are put in the show cages. Care must be exercised to not over feed them bee pollen as you want to keep them quiet until their bodies are fully developed to not ruin their ability to sing later.

Song birds where loudness, frequency and freedom are very important can be feed more bee pollen along with toasted wheat germ to improve these traits. Individuals who just want to enjoy a singing bird will be pleased with the results of feeding bee pollen with wheat germ.

So the answer to the question, "When do you feed bee pollen" is year round but selectively for the my intended purposes.

Note: When you start feeding bee pollen to molting loose feathered birds, their feathers will immediately tighten up. The improvement is obvious even as soon as within 24 hours! It is very important to feed bee pollen to borders!

6 comments:

Rich said...

Feeding bee pollen to Rollers in the show cage is one of those lessons I learned the hard way, it pushed them right over the edge into near breeding condition. I love using bee pollen with my birds year round, but now avoid the over stimulation of my contest birds. Rich

Anonymous said...

Is there a price list for the pollen?

Linda Hogan said...

Hi Rich

It is a hard lesson for the contestant to have their rollers go into breeding song and the judge to say these birds are "over the top!"

American Singers on the other hand fed some bee pollen can out sing all the others and really stand out. But it can also be overdone so that they are just loud and not a pleasing song!

Linda Hogan said...

The Diane prices the bee pollen according to the amount ordered with price difference for 1 lb, 3 lb, and 5 lbs. Call Diane at 320 243-4330 for specific price information.

I have found Peggy's Pollen prices fair and in many cases lower than other sources plus I am concerned with the fact that 90% of pollen sold in the US is from China. It makes me glad that I have used Diane's pollen for at least 20 years!

Unknown said...

Linda,
I use bee pollen year round also with great results. I mix it with my seed so the birds do not waste it. I use to use peggy's pollen but she got to expensive so I order mine from bulkfoods.com alot more reasonable and you get your monies worth and the quality is just as good if not better.

Ed Medrano

Anonymous said...

Linda:
What is your opinion on the "bee pollen" product AVIAN TRIO?
The label says it is a combination of bee pollen, bee propolis and royal jelly.
It seems to be more granular than regular bee pollen which I get here in South Carolina. I find that when the pollen is more granular, less is wasted.
Paul
Charleston, South Carolina