Promotor L® Premix Apis 100 g - Powdered vitamins and amino acids for bees

01 · WHEN YOU NEED IT

Pollen coming in is not always pollen that counts

When the forage dries up —drought, a failed flow, a monoculture— the colony stops raising well-fed nurse bees, and you pay for it in the next generation. Nor is it only about volume: sunflower pollen runs at about 13 % protein and maize at 15 %. Bees raised on a supplement arrive three weeks later, so start before you need them and keep it up for four to six weeks, two brood cycles.

02 · WHAT IT SUPPLIES

Nineteen amino acids and five B-group vitamins

What matters to the bee is the balance between amino acids rather than the headline protein figure, and leucine is usually the limiting one. Ten of the nineteen are essential —she cannot synthesise them—; and of the other nine, alanine, asparagine, glycine and glutamate are not essential to the adult bee, but they are to the larva.

The vitamins are all B-group, the ones involved in brood development and in queen differentiation. What it does not carry, and worth knowing: vitamin C. If you want it, add it separately as ascorbic acid powder: 2 g per 100 kg of feed.

03 · WHAT YOU MIX IT WITH

If your patty is soya-based, this is not optional

Brewer's yeast runs at 40-50 % protein and brings a wide spread of B-group vitamins; soya flour brings protein but considerably less vitamin. That is why the best-practice guides recommend securing that supply with a multivitamin and amino acid preparation when the patty is made with soya. With yeast the premix adds; with soya it fills a real gap.

And there is a reason it comes as a powder: the enemy of a patty is fermentation, and water is the lever. The mix has to stay below 15 % moisture, because above 20 °C it turns in days. A liquid multivitamin spends part of that margin —5 to 15 cc per kilo—; the powder spends none.

04 · HOW TO MIX IT

Weighing it is easy, spreading it through is not

At 0.3 % inclusion, the scales matter less than the distribution: mix it first with a handful of the flour or sugar from your recipe, work that small premix until it is even, and only then fold it into the rest. Tipped straight onto the mass it stays in lumps, and half the colony ends up eating uncorrected patty.

In syrup the order matters: the solids are mixed together first and the liquid goes on top, stirring. And mind the sizing: in patty one sachet covers around twenty-two hives for six weeks; in stimulation syrup, at one or two kilos per hive per week, it comes down to three to eight.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It does not replace pollen or a varied flow, and it will not fix a colony that is weak from varroa, from hunger or from lack of room.

⚠ PRECAUTIONS

If the mix comes out wet, give doses eaten within three days. Withdraw feeding before the honey crop comes in: feed stored in the frames can produce honey that analysis rejects as adulterated.