Hachinoko, Bee (Drone) Larvae/Pupae, Bizarre-Weird Food?

I just received a request from a bloke in NY for some bee larvae/pupae for a charity dinner, I’m too far away, can anyone help him?

How do they prepare them?

How do you harvest them?

I don’t know what this bloke intends to do, he told me he was going to keep me posted. He has to find some first, he told me he rang every bee farm in NY & NJ with no luck. You harvest UNWANTED DRONE LARVAE/PUPAE by putting the comb in water hot enough to melt the wax & strain it, then rinse it with boiling water to remove any residue wax. You can use it in fritters, spring rolls, soups, curries, in omelets. Any way you like, it is a rich source of protein, amino acid, vitamins & enzymes.

I found bee pupae in burr combs they built between 2 boxes. I normally remove those, but hate to do it. what amounts is he looking for?

While bees aren’t exactly endangered, given the trouble they have been having recently this kind of seems inappropriate. Like they don’t have enough to deal with without us eating them as well? As a chef I can appreciate wanting to use interesting and new ingredients, but I don’t know if I can get on board this “trend”

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He wants quite a bit, he’s putting on a huge charity dinner celebrating the International Rescue Committee’s New Roots Program.

Thank you Adam, I appreciate what your saying, I edited the title & highlighted the key words in my reply to Weaver. cheers ps, some people feed their unwanted drone larvae to their chooks & then eat the eggs.

I know what you are saying, and I probably shouldn’t have an issue with it, but maybe it’s the same sort of thing that keeps us from eating horses, dogs, and cats etc. We have a stronger emotional connection to these particular animals and so they escape our dinner table. While in other countries they are fair game. So it’s probably less a logical response to the idea rather then an emotional one.

Obviously not a problem for you, more for him. But I doubt he could find a source that would comply with Health Dept regulations. Animals, and insects meant for human consumption have to be processed and raised in very specific and sanitary conditions to meet the criteria to be sold as food. While they would likely be perfectly safe to eat, they would have to be processed in a health dept regulated and inspected facility to be acceptable to be served to the general public. Some counties have l rules that are more flexible if you are not serving to the “public” and since this is a charity event he may very well have a work around since it will probably be by invitation or ticket only.

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I’m pretty sure that insects for human consumption are not currently specifically regulated.
There would be general rules but not specific rules.

My core work is on developing integrated agriculture projects. Where we integrate different forms of farming to make produce more food with less so that the over all environmental footprint of production is reduced (its profitable too). For the moment we have been focusing on integrating fish with other forms of farming because we can produce masses more fish than beef or lamb with less water and other resources.

In the future people will do the same thing with insects because you can produce even more protein from insects with less than you can with fish. In decades to come as meat gets more expensive more and more people will be eating insects. I don’t see any reason why bees shouldn’t be eaten like any other farm animal. You have to look after them and harvest them appropriately but as long as you do that, why not?

The environmental footprint from beef is massive. If you look at water alone 1kg of beef requires about 16,000L of water. Chicken takes over 4,000L of water. 1kg of fish can be produced with less than 1,000L and if the production is integrated with other farming methods can actually be produced with zero water use. Insect farming uses a bit more water than fish but the food conversion efficiency is amazing plus you can feed them foods that nothing else will eat.

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Hi Weaver, sounds like your right into it, it’s kind of what I’ve been on about for quite a few years now, they say that half of the world can live on what the other half throws away. I believe that. I’ll ttyl, bye

Hi Adam, your probably right, he made a request on my Youtube channel, I’m tipping he has lots of other dishes planned. Me & my wife have eaten hachinoko, I eat fish eyes out of a fish head curry, my wife wont knowingly touch them. I wouldn’t eat the things you mentioned. There’s one thing I definitely wont eat on strong principle is foie gras. I will never try surstromming, cochroaches, scorpions or spiders. I’m sure there’s more. I’ll ttyl, bye

I wish I could get my brain wrapped around eating insects. I know how good they are and how much better they are environmentally speaking. There is just something fundamentally wrong with eating them lol. I would like to try the new cricket flours they are selling. I think I could stomach it if there weren’t bugs staring back at me. I am currently working on setting up an aquaponic system to go along with my flow hive to supplement my families food/diet. So we will harvesting sustainable fish/produce pollinated by the bees to go with the honey created from the pollen and nectar from the garden(I realize this will only make up a small amount of the honey they produce). Crickets/roaches would be an easy way to compost any green waste and trimmings from the garden, and I suppose if I can get used to the idea potentially another protein source as well. Worst case they will go back to nourish the fish.

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Hi Adam, that’s fantastic, aquaponics is a great way to go, I hope you can do it cost effectively, I have a Youtube friend “Rob Bob”, another Ausie who’s right into it, he has lots of videos about what he does & it’s all on a tight budget. I never got into it because, until recent times, I caught a lot of fish. I’d try cricket flour for sure, this is the first time I heard of it. Wilma & I both feel funny about eating the larvae while it’s staring back at us, that’s why it’s great to incorporate it in spring rolls etc. We also blended it in soup. We haven’t eaten any for ages. It’s the brood that bears & honey badgers are targeting when they raid beehives. Also the Giant Japanese Hornets are targeting the brood to take back to feed their own brood on. A dare say the hornets themselves probably have a good feed of honey in the process. One day while extracting honey, I cut a small piece of comb out because it had a bee larvae in it & put it on the table. A couple of days later I noticed ants had found it. The larvae was surrounded by ants but not one ant was eating the honey at that stage. That must have been 15 years ago I saw that. If you talk to Rob Bob, say G’day for me, I’ll ttyl, bye

I mentioned about this request to our beekeeping club, we maybe able to help him. we’re in Pa. They are interested, can you give him this link and we’ll contact him?
http://www.lehighvalleybeekeepers.org/Pages/contactus.aspx

Can I just say;

{shudder}ewwwwwww…{/shudder}

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Thank you:):), I’ll certainly do that right now, cheers, ps he’s on Youtube so in case he doesn’t check his messages his name is Kristopher Edelen. thanks again, bye