These beautiful pictures were taken by Kira on her very first visit to our beehives. It is always fun to see how these ladies are bringing home the pollen.
When they collect the pollen from the flowers, they stuff the pollen into pollen bags on their back legs. This makes it easier for them to fly with all of that pollen. They use the pollen to make bee bread with. Bee bread is a mixture of pollen, honey and a special enzyme the bees secrete. This mixture then ferments and is called Bee Bread. It is very healthy and provides the bees with all the protein and nutrients they need to thrive.
Bee pollen is an incredible natural food and only a teaspoon a day is necessary to reap its many benefits (and that teaspoon contains over 2.5 billion grains of flower pollen that took a busy little bee 8 hours to collect!). It is only collected for 3 weeks out of the year from the strongest hives.
Bee pollen is approximately 40% protein and contains nearly every nutrient needed by the human body and cannot be replicated by a laboratory (though they have tried!).