NECTAR-CAU food pollen substitute compositions and formulation from rice bean (Vigna umbellata) for apiculture

Abstract

A NECTAR-CAU food pollen substitute for rearing honeybees can be used in granule form during the dearth period or non-available of pollens in the field. The substitute is composed of a mixture of rice bean grain powder, dry yeast and local honey of Apis cerana himalaya. A NECTAR-CAU food pollen substitute contains by weight 354.7 Kcal energy, 67.29 g carbohydrate, 20.71 g protein, 0.3 g fat, 37 mg vitamin C, 0.06 mg vitamin B2, 3 mg potassium and 1 mg magnesium (dry weight basis). This NECTAR-CAU food pollen substitute composition and formulation provides nutritional food to honeybees during the dearth period. NECTAR-CAU food pollen substitute contains all the ingredients, texture and consistency that would be readily accepted by honeybees year-round, healthful and rich enough to meet all their nutrition and strength, especially for colonies preparing for over-wintering and starting population build-up in the early spring.

Description

Description:Honeybees require nectar and pollen as food is the major source of proteins, vitamins and minerals while nectar contains carbohydrates. After emergence, young bees consume bee bread (stored pollen) which has been acted upon by microbes. Beekeepers often do not collect pollen to add to diets, and commercially available pollen is costly. Furthermore, it may be contaminated with various honeybee pathogens (Herbert and Shimanuki, 1980) or may contain toxic pollen (Schmidt et al., 1987). Most beekeepers cannot afford high-cost investments. So, the diet must have economic viability and can easily be prepared by the beekeepers themselves. Ideal pollen substitutes should contain all the ingredients, texture and consistency that would be readily accepted by honeybees year-round, healthful, and rich enough to meet all their nutrition and strength, especially for colonies preparing for over-wintering and starting population build-up in the early spring.Colonies placed in greenhouses for pollination and those in agricultural areas suffer from protein deficiency during the dearth period which adversely affects the colony performance due to reduction / stoppage of egg laying and reduction in brood rearing. All these factors lead to quick dwindling / perishing bee colonies (Apis cerana himalaya) and finally absconding. The best way to maintain the honey bee colonies and bee health is to move / migrate, the bee colonies to a bee flora-rich region or provide pollen substitute or feed artificial diet and supplement This in turn will increase the strength of the bee colonies for the next season. But the practice of feeding honeybees with pollen supplements or substitutes has been hardly done by beekeepers in India. So, in the present study different pulse-based pollen substitute diet was prepared from locally available pulses which are on par with the nutritional value of natural pollen. The amino acid composition of pollen determines its quality as a food source for bees, and pollen substitutes based on soya, beer yeast and (milk) proteins contain the essential amino acids. However, such substitutes are not always palatable to bees. Sugars do not function as an attractant, but they do stimulate intake. Pollen substitutes mixed with sucrose are consumed best (Doull, 1980). Dastouri et al. (2007) used pea powder, milk powder, soyabean meal and collected pollen to make four different diets for honey bees. Significant differences were recorded between the colonies fed with pea powder and other supplements, except the pollen supplement. There was no significant difference found between the pea and pollen supplement treatments. A significant increase was found in the population of colonies treated with pea powder than in other colonies treated with milk powder and soybean meal. An investigation was done to check the effect of supplementary feeding on honey bee colonies in Turkey. Pande and Karnatak (2014) used germinated pulses as pollen substitutes for pollen-scarce period management of honeybee colonies. Different germinated pulses flour was used to formulate four different diet(s) viz. ger horse gram, ger chickpea, ger green gram / Mungbean, ger Pea. All pollen substitute diets affect the colony attributes positively including foraging activity, brood area and honey stores. Colonies fed with germinated chickpea showed a significant increase in all parameters including honey store followed by colonies treated with ger green gram and ger horse gram respectively. Kumari and Kumar (2020) formulated and fed a diet composed of Defatted Soy Flour, Parched Gram, Brewer Yeast and Protein Hydrolysate Powder to Apis mellifera in the sub-tropical Himalayan region. The results obtained revealed that diet got consumed in good quantity and influenced the colony parameters positively. The effect of feeding diet was also observed on the quality and quantity of honey. It was found that there was no deterioration in honey quality; also the quantity of honey was increased. Rice bean (Vigna umbellata (Thunb.) Ohwi and Ohashi), believed to be domesticated in Myanmar–Thailand region, is grown in the North-Eastern hills of India as a pulse, vegetable, and fodder crop. Rice bean is a tropical to temperate grain legume primarily grown for food, especially in Asia. Rice bean grains and vegetative parts are also used for fodder. Rice bean is a fast summer-growing legume found from sea level up to altitudes of 1500 m in Assam and 2000 m in the hills of the Himalayas. Rice bean is an N-fixing legume that improves the N status of the soil, thus providing N to the following crop. Its taproot has a beneficial effect on soil structure and, when ploughed in, returns organic matter and N to the soil. Rice bean grown before or after rice or maize crop is beneficial. The major nutrients are protein, with albumin and globulin as the major constituents with a higher percentage of unsaturated fatty acids (Sujayanand et al., 2021). The rice bean grains are nutritionally well balanced and superior to other legumes such as soybean by virtue of its low oligosaccharides viz., stachyose, raffinose and verbascose. Hence very low flatulence occurs on the consumption of these seeds than other legumes. The rice beans’ proteins (82-85%) were more highly digestible than mungbean (80%). The higher digestibility is due to the absence of trypsin and chymotrypsin inhibitors (Katoch, 2013). The protein content to the extent of 25.57% was observed in the genotype BRS-2 with in vitro digestibility of 54.23%. The fatty acid profile revealed a higher percentage of unsaturated fatty viz., linoleic and linolenic acid, which are nutritionally desirable in the diet. Albumins (6.13% to 7.47%) and globulins (13.11% to 15.56%) constituted the major portion of proteins. Anti-nutritional factors were in the range of: total phenolics (1.63% to 1.82%), total tannins (1.37% to 1.55%), condensed tannins (0.75% to 0.80%), hydrolysable tannins (0.56% to 0.79%), trypsin inhibitor (24.55 to 37.23 mg / g), phytic acid (7.32 to 8.17 mg / g), lipoxygenase activity (703 to 950 units / mg), and saponin content (1.2 to 3.1 mg / 100 g). The oligosaccharides associated with the production of flatulence viz., raffinose, stachyose, and verbascose were in the limits of 1.66% to 2.58%, 0.94% to 1.88%, and 0.85% to 1.23%, respectively (Katoch, 2013). This invention relates to a pollen substitute for use, especially in apiculture. For the purpose of rearing honeybees, it is necessary to make up for any shortage of pollen which may occur for climatic reasons or at the end of the winter season. Under such circumstances, the food stocks of a hive become depleted whereas the colony should rear as many larvae as possible. Beekeepers have sought to solve this problem of the addition of protein products but have failed up to the present time to achieve a wholly satisfactory result. Several products have been proposed and employed but chief among these can be mentioned sugar, syrups, egg powders, yeasts, and protein substances such as corn-soaking water. The relative failure of these different artificial food products arises essentially from an unbalance in the proportions of the elementary substances proposed concerning the composition of natural pollen. The immediate practical result of these disadvantages is a lack of appetite of the bees with all the consequences of undernourishment regarding the prosperity of the colony and honey production. The invention is directed to a food composition having an amino acid and vitamin content which is practically identical to that of pollen containing 20-25% protein substances, is wholly assimilable by bees and well accepted by the worker bees.The objectives of the invention:1. An object of this invention is to propose a process for rice bean (Vigna umbellata) using organic materials.2. An object of this invention is to propose a process for local Indian honeybee honey using organic materials.3. An object of this invention is to create new pollen substitute compositions and formulations as food for honeybees.4. Further, the object of this invention is to propose a formulation containing rice bean, local Indian honeybee honey and yeast which is nutritive food for honeybees.5. Another object of this invention is to testing of different concentrations of pollen substitute formulation as food for honeybees during a dearth period.6. It is an object of the present invention to provide NECTAR-CAU food pollen substitute compositions and formulations capable of providing nutritive food to honeybees.7. Yet another object of this invention is to prepare a pollen substitute formulation which is economical and easy to deliver to beekeepers.

Claims

, Claims:

1. The method for preparing a NECTAR-CAU food pollen substitute composition and formulation comprising, a plant grain-based powder belonging to Vigna umbellate with local honey, Apis cerana himalaya and dry yeast in the ratio of 5:3:2.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein a part of Vigna umbellate obtained by pods harvesting and dried the same under sunlight and dehiscing the same using tumbling and threshing to obtain crude grains.

3. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the dried crude grains of Vigna umbellate are crushed to powder using a grinding machine and passed through a sieve to get fine powder as small as pollen.

4. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein, the dried powder in claim 3 is conditioned and refined with bio-enhancer protein, particularly from Puramate instant dry yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) having 50 per cent protein on a dry weight basis.

5. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein, the pollen substitute composition in claim 4 is mixed with local honey of Apis cerana himalaya to obtain a high amount of energy, potassium and vitamins.

6. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein, the pollen substitute composition in claim 5, after mixing all the materials goes for granules making by passing a large size sieve and drying under hot air oven at 49-52oC.

7. A NECTAR-CAU food pollen substitute, as claimed in claims 1-6, wherein said substitute contains by weight 20.71 g protein that is nutritional food for apiculture.

8. A NECTAR-CAU food pollen substitute, as claimed in claims 1-6, wherein said substitute additionally contains approximately 354.7 Kcal energy that improves the health of honeybees.

9. A NECTAR-CAU food pollen substitute, as claimed in claims 1-6, wherein said substitute additionally contains 0.3 g fat, 37 mg vitamin C, 0.06 mg vitamin B2, 3 mg potassium and 1 mg magnesium (dry weight basis).

10. A NECTAR-CAU food pollen substitute, as claimed in claim 1 and intended to be mixed with a ratio of 5:3:2, wherein said substitute contains by weight 354.7 Kcal energy, 67.29 g carbohydrate, 20.71 g protein, 0.3 g fat, 37 mg vitamin C, 0.06 mg vitamin B2, 3 mg potassium and 1 mg magnesium (dry weight basis).

11. A NECTAR-CAU food pollen substitute, as claimed in claim 10, wherein said substitute consists of a homogenous mixture of 50 parts by weight of rice bean grain powder, 30 parts by weight of dry yeast and 20 parts by weight of local honey of Apis cerana himalaya.