
Bee Bread - emidln
http://nordicfoodlab.org/blog/2015/9/4/bee-bread
======
bradbeattie
Are there any negative effects to harvesting this bee bread?

> But the bees do not consume their pollen fresh. Instead, they take it into
> the hive and pack the granules into empty comb cells, mixing them with
> nectar and digestive fluids and sealing the cell with a drop of honey. Once
> processed in this way, the pollen remains stable indefinitely. Beekeepers
> call this form of pollen ‘perga’ or ‘bee bread’.

This implies it's their food.

Given the recent concerns with
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder),
is this unusual delicacy worth the potential environmental damages? (I don't
mean that rhetorically; It's an actual question.)

~~~
saalweachter
All harvesting from bees is essentially stealing their food. Modern hive
designs allow a beekeeper to take excess honey or pollen from a hive non-
destructively. The trick is to only take it from strong hives, while leaving
the bees a sufficient quantity to overwinter.

Honey is the overwinter food; beekeepers typically try to leave the bees about
80 lbs, depending on the climate. Pollen is much more important for raising
new bees -- removing it will limit the growth of the hive, which in some
species is actually desirable. A hive which grows too much is prone to
swarming, which beekeepers typically avoid. They will instead save the pollen
for the spring -- if you feed the bees pollen after it has begun to warm but
before there are flowers in bloom, it will help them build their population
back up earlier and they will be at full strength for the early nectar flows.

~~~
byron_fast
In my experience most commercial beekeepers use cyanide gas to kill their bees
after harvesting the honey; they start fresh with new queens in spring. The
rare few who overwinter their bees use sugar syrup and store the bees in a
cool warehouse designed to keep them dormant during winter.

From a commercial beekeeping perspective "colony collapse disorder" is nothing
but a recent news fad. There are cycles of different problems for decades, but
I doubt there is something extraordinary about the current state of
beekeeping.

Killing the makers of your livelihood and dealing with catastrophic problems
is usually known as "farming".

~~~
yawz
I'm a beekeeper and I cannot disagree more... about gassing, and about the
recent disorders.

I'm not old enough to talk about beekeeping in the '70s and '80s, but our
losses are much more important now than 10-15 years ago.

CCD is probably a combination of various pressures such as Varroa mites,
pesticides, mono-culturing, destruction of natural resources, etc. But these
days, one has to work (often hard) to get one's colonies survive... unlike
before, when you could let them do their thing most of the time.

~~~
byron_fast
I've heard this recently as well, but I've also read that the current
difficulties we read about were also the case over a hundred years ago, but
obviously with different causes. It's hard to know what's new and what's part
of a cycle.

------
noipv4
For my seasonal pollen allergies here's what I do. a) Take a spoonful of dried
bee bread b) Take 2 spoonful of local honey c) Add 100ml warm water d) Stir it
until the bee-bread dissolves e) Drink it. (Starts acting in 10 minutes)

Anyone know why it works?

~~~
hueving
Placebo effect

~~~
adrianN
It could also be something like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allergen_immunotherapy#Oral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allergen_immunotherapy#Oral)

~~~
noipv4
This might be it. Very interesting!!

~~~
nommm-nommm
It most certainly is not. You don't respond immediately to immunotherapy and
certainly not in 10 minutes.

~~~
fit2rule
.. unless you've been doing the "10-minute fix" for some years ..

~~~
nommm-nommm
It still doesn't work that way though. The GP didn't describe immunotherapy,
they described "take a substance, feel better in a few minutes" like an
aspirin. That is just not how immunotherapy works.

~~~
noipv4
Do you have a hypothesis as to why it works? In my case it has almost the same
antihistamine effect as 60mg Allegra pill.

~~~
nommm-nommm
No mechanism of action I know of other than placebo effect.

You did not describe anything that resembles immunotherapy. Immunotherapy
takes a very long time (months to over a year) before you start to notice an
improvement in symptoms and requires year round treatment, not just during
allergy season. After 3-5 years treatment is discontinued.

~~~
noipv4
Can you suggest what kind of blood test can determine if my immune system is
reacting to the concoction? In the past my eosonophil and neutrophil numbers
were very high during seasonal allergies. Would testing for these numbers be
indicative?

~~~
nommm-nommm
I am no doctor so I do not. Try consulting yours.

~~~
noipv4
Unfortunately I do not have the finances to consult a specialist, and thus my
trial with non-Rx treatment for hay-fever like honey, BB, and other stuff.
Anti-histamines like Allegra, Zyrtec, and Xyzal are quite the sleep inducers
for me.

------
adrianwaj
Bee Bread is awesome and much more nutritious and digestible than flower
pollen (mistakenly called bee pollen) which the bees ferment in their hive to
make bee bread. The problem I've found is that anything coming from Lithuania
or Latvia (a lot on ebay), could be radioactive from Chernobyl, as
radioactivity concentrates in pollen. That's my assessment of it anyway, so I
won't risk it. Also, there was another accident in Lithuania in 2010.

I'd prefer that Bee Bread became more mainstream so that it could be bought
from local producers who'd respond to that demand. Bee bread from the Altai
mountains in Siberia is double the price of the eastern European BB.

Ideally, BB from New Zealand would be best, but I couldn't find it. Eg Manuka.

~~~
tomaac
Do you have any evidence or source that proves your claims about radioactive
bee bread in Latvia and Lithuania? These countries actually were not affected
that much. Much less than Scandinavia
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#National_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#National_and_international_spread_of_radioactive_substances)

You should actually be worried about pesticides which kills bees and poisons
bee honey and bread
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide_toxicity_to_bees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide_toxicity_to_bees)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its strange where radioactive particles end up. In the Black Forest its in
fungi that grow on trees, a favorite food of wild board. So all wild boar
taken in the Black Forest must be tested with a Geiger counter before the meat
can be sold! Over 500 REMS (?) and no sale.

------
foreigner
How did they not make the obvious "beebliography" pun at the end? I would not
have been able to resist that.

------
cpach
I had no idea that Nordic Food Lab had a blog. Really fascinating!

------
PaulHoule
Our beekeeper just told us our hives made 800 lbs of honey so far this year.

~~~
roel_v
Whereabouts is that? How many hives?

~~~
PaulHoule
About 10. 2 are superperformers, 3 strong, the others mediocre. The hives are
at the only place in the valley which is flat enough to mow but has not been
mowed so there is very rich vegetation. This is in Upstate New York near
Ithaca.

------
badloginagain
That was a fascinating read! Who would have guessed that bees intentionally
ferment food sources. I wonder if there is anything humans can learn from bee
fermentation process. So cool, thanks for sharing!

~~~
exolymph
I think "intentionally" might be a bit of an overstatement — it's more like
their behavior patterns have evolved in response to the benefits of
fermentation.

------
andrelaszlo
Hilarious coincident that the photographer's name is Josh Pollen!

~~~
Aelinsaar
Or is this the coming of the bee revolution?! Wake up sheeple!!! (Just kidding
of course).

Seriously though, I've never heard of the last name "Pollen", is there any
chance that it's pseudonym?

~~~
knodi123
Might just be an alternate spelling of Pollan. Which, concidentally,

[http://michaelpollan.com/books/in-defense-of-
food/](http://michaelpollan.com/books/in-defense-of-food/)

------
cvs268
@emidln U probably forgot that U had submitted the same article on HN ~6months
ago...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nordicfoodlab.org](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nordicfoodlab.org)

Thanks for sharing though, i had missed it the last time around. :) :)

~~~
emidln
I wouldn't say that I forgot, more that I was reminded by an email:

    
    
        Hi there,
        
        [snip] looks good, but didn't
        get much attention. Would you care to repost it? You can    do so
        here: [snip].
        
        Please use the same account (emidln), title, and URL.     When these match,
        the software will give the repost an upvote from the mods, plus we'll
        help make sure it doesn't get flagged.
        
        This is part of an experiment in giving good HN   submissions multiple
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        Thanks for posting good things to Hacker News,
        Daniel

~~~
kelukelugames
Are there multiple mods or is just the one?

~~~
gwern
I've received maybe 10 of them, but always from dang.

