Do bees benefit from Maize flowers and collecting Cassava flour?

Bees collecting cassava flour at one of WBA member's home

Here in Nakasongola; during the flowering season for maize, a thousands of bees swarm into the fields onto the flowers of maize. And during the dry season especially December to early March, here in Nakasongola, bees fly into shops and anywhere they find cassava flour. And some beekeepers during the dry season, provide the bees with cassava flour. 

And there is a believe that when bees collect a lot of cassava flour usually they produce a lot of honey unfortunately i cant not prove it though i see the bees collecting cassava flour.

Do really bees benefit from collecting cassava flour?

Conrad Berube says:

Bees are basically little robots and will react to their environment in the way by which evolutionary forces have molded them.  They will collect many powdery materials that have little, or no, nutritional value compared to what they would get from pollen (including things like powdered stone or sawdust).  

 

For instance here is the nutritional breakdown for cassava flour;

    
    

Nutritional Summary: Cals 160 Fat 0.28g Carbs 38.06g Prot 1.36g   There are 160 calories in 100 grams of Cassava. Calorie Breakdown: 1% fat, 96% carbs, 3% prot.

 

     

Here's the same for corn flour 

Nutritional Summary:

Cals 361

Fat 3.86g

Carbs 76.85g

Prot 6.93g

 

There are 361 calories in 100 grams of White Whole Grain Corn Flour.

Calorie Breakdown: 9% fat, 86% carbs, 5% prot.

 

 

Bees get most of the calories they need from nectar so the high carb substances (96% for cassava, 86 % for corn flour, represent wasted effort for bees, since pollen, is much higher in protein-- typically around 30%: 

Nutritional Summary:

Cals 314

Fat 4.9g

Carbs 43.5g

Prot 24.1g

 

There are 314 calories in 100 grams of Bee Pollen.

Calorie Breakdown: 14% fat, 55% carbs, 31% prot.

 

Here is the nutritional contents of Pollen:

• Protein } 20-35% protein by weight
• Fatty acids }
• Vitamin C }
• Iron }
• Zinc }
• Copper }
• Magnesium }

So if bees are collecting cassava or corn flour they need to collect/eat from 5-10 times as much to get the same amount of protein.  If, for some reason, beekeepers really want to supplement the pollen their bees are getting soy flour is a much better choice.

 

Nutritional Summary:

Cals 436

Fat 20.65g

Carbs 35.19g

Prot 34.54g

 

There are 436 calories in 100 grams of Soy Flour (Full Fat).

Calorie Breakdown: 40% fat, 33% carbs, 27% prot.  Well from the above discussion, it shows that there is less nutritional value in cassava flour compared to soy flour. But in Nakasongola, many families grow cassava and can easily produce and provide cassava flour to their bees. And soy flour is not accessible unless one goes into a supermarket and buy it because very few or no one grows soy in Nakasongola. Soy is not so much grown in Uganda compared to cassava, sweetpotatoes, yams, maize and banana/matooke.  And to my surprise and experience, bees don't collect maize flour so much like they would collect cassava flour.