Production
Foraging bees bring pollen back to the hive and pass it off to another worker bee. This bee will pack the pollen into a cell with its head. During the packing, the pollen is mixed with nectar, enzymes, fungi and bacteria, organisms that transform the pollen into bee bread. The resulting material is higher in nutrition than the untreated pollen. Bee bread is the primary source of protein for the hive.
Like royal jelly, honey and propolis, other well-known honey bee products, the exact chemical composition of pollen gathered depends on 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. Although there is no specific chemical composition, the average composition has been said to be 55% carbohydrates, 35% proteins, 3% minerals and vitamins, 2% fatty acids, and 5% of diverse other components.
A recent study of samples of bee bread showed they may contain 188 kinds of fungi and 29 kinds of bacteria. Bee bread is sometimes referred to as ambrosia.
Bee bread is used in naturopathic medicine traditions and as a nutritional supplement, although exposure may trigger allergic or anaphylactic reactions in sensitive people.
Read more about this topic: Bee Pollen
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)