Bee bread

Bee bread or bee pollen is a food supplement consisting of pollen that has been packed by worker honeybees into granules, with added honey or nectar. It can vary from hour to hour, day to day, week to week, colony to colony. Bee bread is used in naturopathic medicine traditions and as a nutritional supplement, although exposure may trigger allergic or anaphylactic reactions in sensitive people. The major components of pollen are proteins and amino acid, lipids (fats, oils or their derivatives) and sugars. The minor components are more diverse. All amino acids essential to humans (phenylalanine, leucine, valine, isoleucine, arginine, histidine, lysine, methionine, threonine and tryptophan) can be found in pollen and most others as well, with proline being the most abundant. Many enzymes (proteins) are also present but some, like glucose oxidase which is very important in honey. have been added by the bees. This enzyme is therefore more abundant in "beebread" than in fresh pollen pellets.