The importance of bee pollen

Bee pollen is nature’s superfood, but how bee pollen is collected as well as where can have a decided impact on the nutritional value of the product.

It may seem strange to talk about pollution in the same breath as the collection of bee pollen, but the environment that the bees collect their pollen is very important, especially when it comes to nutritional content.

What is bee pollen? As you are most likely aware, bee pollen is collected when the bees select various flower pollens and carry them back to their hive, but what many people don’t give much thought to, is how the quality of the environment that the bees live and work in affects the quality of the pollen that is collected.

Bee Pollen Contamination

The bees can be the most industrious bees anywhere, but if the pollen that they are collecting is tainted with chemicals blown in from ad joining farms that use chemical fertilizers or is in the path of fallout from heavy pollution areas, or nearby to a major highway or other high-traffic area, then the nutritional content of the pollen may be lowered, or even compromised by the effects of the toxins and pollutants that will find their way into the flowers the bees are collecting pollen from.

And then, of course, there is the issue of quality when it comes to how bee pollen is collected. Large corporations that collect bee pollen are focused solely on quantity of product.

This means that they don’t necessarily care how they get the bee pollen, as long as they can collect the most bee pollen possible so that they can be assured of a tidy profit. If this means harming the bees in the process, or even robbing the nests of the food they will need in order to survive the winter, then so be it. There have also been reports of some pollen collectors who will ‘cut’ the pollen collected with filler so as to get more money for products that are not 100% pure pollen.

Collecting bee pollen is done by a small device that is placed at the entrance to the hive. This device collects some of the pollen from the bee’s ‘pollen baskets’ as the bees walk across it. What gets past the device is used by the bees themselves to feed their larva and to make royal jelly for their princesses. This safe and effective method ensures that not all the pollen is taken and that the bees are not traumatized in any way.

How bee pollen is collected is very important, and if you want the very best in quality when it comes to bee pollen, then you will want to opt for local bee pollen; pollen that has been collected safely and humanely so that the bees are not physically harmed or traumatized and that sustainable methods have been used to collect the pollen so that enough will be left for the bees to use for themselves.