Bee bread, or perga, is made inside the hive, in the honeycomb. It is one of nature's oldest ways of preserving food, and the bees do all of it themselves.
1. Bees collect pollen
In summer, bees fly from flower to flower collecting nectar and pollen. They carry the pollen back to the hive on their hind legs, in small yellow or orange pellets. A colony collects around 57 kg of pollen a year, and almost all of it goes into raising the larvae.
2. The pollen is packed into the comb
In the hive, the bees mix the pollen with honey and their own enzymes. Then they press the mixture tightly into the honeycomb cells and seal it with a thin layer of honey.
3. The bee bread ferments in the comb
In the cells, the pollen ferments naturally. Fermentation preserves it, so it lasts as food for the colony all winter. At the same time, the taste becomes tangy and slightly sour.
4. How is bee bread harvested?
The beekeeper removes the bee bread from the comb. It is packed tightly into the cells, so it takes much more work than extracting honey. There isn't much of it either: in a Polish study, one hive produced on average about 0.7 kg of bee bread a year, between 0.5 and 1.2 kg. That is also why bee bread costs more than honey.
5. The bee bread becomes a pastille
In Perga Glow pastilles, the bee bread is mixed with berry or fruit powder and pressed into hexagon pastilles, the same shape as the honeycomb cell it came from. Every pastille is packed in its own pouch, so it fits in your bag or pocket.
Good to know: bee bread is not suitable if you are allergic to bee products or pollen.
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Source: Semkiw P. & Skubida P. (2021). Bee Bread Production: A New Source of Income for Beekeeping Farms? Agriculture 11(6).
