# Frutalose® L90 as bee feed



## Apismellifera (Oct 12, 2014)

https://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/grd/d/non-gmo-glucose-sugar-from/6259928891.html

If anyone has any knowledge of this stuff, please chime in.

I have a friend who is contemplating buying some of this for bee feed. Looks pretty frankenstein to me, and it's out of date by a year and has obviously not been kept according to the label directions.









if you blow up that image and look carefully it says

"for the shelf life mentioned at 'best before' storage at max 44F is required"


Frutafit® CLR/Frutafit® HD/Frutafit® IQ/Frutafit® Tex! Frutalose® L90/Frutalose® SF75

What is inulin?
Inulin is a carbohydrate that is present in tens of thousands of plants. It has been part of our daily diet for many hundreds of years. Since about 1985 inulin has been extracted on an industrial scale from chicory roots for use as a high quality food ingredient. The chemical composition of inulin extracted from chicory is: G(F)n, where n can vary from 2 to 60 (G=glucose, F=fructose). Inulin is therefore a compound of fructose oligosaccharide and polysaccharide chains, usually terminating in a glucose molecule. The fructose molecules are linked to each other by a β- (2→1) glycosidic bond.

Soluble dietary fiber
Neither the enzymes in the human digestive system nor our gastric juices are capable of breaking down the β-(2→1) bond between the fructose molecules in inulin. Inulin passes intact to the large intestine. It can therefore be classified as a dietary fiber. Since Frutafit® and Frutalose® are soluble dietary fibers that are colorless and have neutral taste they can be used as a fiber enricher in many foodstuffs without affecting their appearance or taste.

from:
http://norbencompany.com/featured/17/Frutafit-Frutalose


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## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

Caveat: I have no personal knowledge of this product. But, I do have a college background in organic chemistry and bioengineering. (Enough science to be dangerous and win the occasional Jeopardy category!)

We feed our bees sugar, but some of us feed weird sugars like pure fructose. There are some arguments as to whether sucrose (table sugar) is better than fructose as far as winter feeding (how impure is the sugar when metabolized and how often will cleansing flights be needed is the question here). 

This stuff isn't sugar... according to the label snipped you provide. It is sugar with a long carbohydrate "n" attached to the end, but they then claim that enzymes in human digestion cannot break down the "n" which makes it more or less fiber instead of sugar. So, it has a little sugar in it, but the sugar is locked up tight and unavailable for digestion. The bees are needing the calories... they need just pure sugar to burn as energy. So, this stuff would be like wood to them... completely non-nutritive.

(I'm making the assumptions that bees lack the same enzyme humans lack, which is a pretty big assumption, but not an unreasonable one I don't think. We eat sugar for energy just like they do, and if anything we have more enzymes than they do, which is why we get energy from bread and potatoes and stuff they don't eat).

It sounds like a fad diet ingredient. Like you are supposed to blend it with a protein shake to make a low calorie meal substitute.

I would not use it.

Thanks!
Mike


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## dudelt (Mar 18, 2013)

I absolutely agree. Stay away from it. Table sugar and high fructose corn syrup have been tested by thousands of beekeepers. They are proven to work. Besides that, I doubt the cost of that stuff is any where near as affordable as table sugar.


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