Bee bread

Definition

Foragers return with pollen pellets and pack them into cells, where house bees add nectar, honey and glandular secretions and press them down. It is widely described as lacto-fermented into a more digestible food, but a 2014 USDA-led study found few microbes, no distinct microbial community in stored pollen and a preference by bees for pollen stored under three days, and concluded that the cell is a preservative environment rather than a place of nutrient conversion. What is not in dispute is its role: it is the colony's protein, lipid and micronutrient supply, nurse bees eat it to make the glandular food they give larvae, and pollen availability rather than nectar is usually what limits brood rearing.

Where the word gets used loosely

Bee bread and bee pollen are sold interchangeably as supplements and are not the same substance — trapped bee pollen is the raw pellet taken at the hive entrance, bee bread the packed store taken from the comb. Both are plausible allergens for anyone sensitive to the source plants, and severe reactions are documented, which rarely appears alongside the nutritional claims on the packaging.

Guide records that discuss this

• Bee pollen: the colony's proteinPollen packed into pellets with nectar and enzymes, and the entire protein supply of a colony. Nutritionally real, nutritionally unremarkable at the doses people take, and not a treatment for hay fever.
• What honey bees eat, and the bacteria in their gutNectar is fuel and pollen is everything else. A honey bee also carries a small, specialised community of gut bacteria that it catches from its nestmates in its first days of life — and that antibiotics and at least one herbicide can disrupt.

Question records that discuss this

• What is bee bread?Bee bread is pollen packed into a cell with nectar, honey and bee secretions — the colony's stored protein, eaten by nurse bees to make the food they feed larvae. It is often said to be fermented into something more digestible; a 2014 study found little evidence of that, so treat the fermentation story as contested. It is not the same thing as the bee pollen sold as a supplement.