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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Methods of the investigation of bee pollen and bee bread

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The main purpose of this publication was to evaluate which types of studies are used with the purpose of the estimation of nutritional value of bee pollen and bee bread. Bee pollen and bee bread are important bee-products that contains large amounts of nutritional and essential active biological compounds. Among different bioactive compounds with antioxidant properties which could be found in bee pollen and bread are polyphenolic substances, flavonoids, unsaturated acids and carotenoids. Bee pollen and bee bread are investigated by plenty of scientists for different quality indexes over two last decades. However, the composition of bee pollen and bee bread are not yet standardized nor defined in pharmacopoeia as it primarily depends on their botanical and geographical origin, environmental conditions, time of collection of bee pollen by bees, location of used plants for collection of bee pollen, etc. For the purpose of the estimation of bee pollen and bee bread researchers the most often conduct palynological analysis and employ phytochemical studies for measuring total phenolic content using mainly the Folin-Ciocalteu colorimetric method, aluminum colorimetric method for sum of flavonoids determination and one or two methods for antioxidant activity. Large deviations of measuring the total antioxidant activity, total phenolic content, sum of flavonoids and other components are considerable. This fact and usage of different analytical procedures and reference standards interfere standardization of these products. Also investigators of bee keeping products utilize biological methods of study with the purpose of measuring antimicrobial and cytotoxic performances of extracts of bee pollen and bee bread. In general, phytochemical and biological studies show the prospects of usage of these bee keeping products in food and pharmaceutical industry as functional food ingredients and/or natural medicinal products.