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Bee bread or bee pollen-sam[1] is the main source of food for most honey bees and their larvae, consisting of honey and pollens which are gathered by the worker bees.
Like honey and propolis, other well-known honey bee products, the exact chemical composition of pollen gathered is dependent upon which plants the worker bees are gathering the pollen from, and can vary from hour to hour, day to day, week to week, colony to colony, even in the same apiary, and no two samples of bee bread will be exactly identical. Accordingly, chemical and nutritional analyses of bee bread apply only to the specific samples being tested, and cannot be extrapolated to samples gathered in other places or other times.
A recent study of samples of bee bread showed they may contain 188 kinds of fungi and 29 kinds of bacteria.[2] Bee bread is sometimes referred to as ambrosia.[3]
Bee bread is used in naturopathic medicine traditions and as a nutritional supplement, although exposure may trigger allergic or anaphylactic reactions in sensitive people.[1]
References
- ^ a b Wong, Cathy (February 2, 2005). "Bee Pollen". about.com. Retrieved on 2006-09-23.
- ^ Black, Jacquelyn G. (2004). Microbiology, John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 0-471-42084-0.
- ^ Oxford Canadian Dictionary
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