Pollen and pelleted pollen

What is ball pollen ? Why does the bee bring it back to the hive ?

After collecting pollen from the stamens, the forager bee crushes it with its saliva to make balls which it fixes in the baskets of its legs to bring them back to the hive where they will be used as food. It is this saliva, rich in antibacterial enzymes, which gives pollen some of its therapeutic properties, the other part coming from plants and their benefits.

Infinitely varied, pollen is collected from flowers by bees. Pollen grains are the main food and the only protein source for bees. The richness of a pollen can be appreciated by the diversity of its floral origins, as shown by the nuances and varieties of its colors. It is a food rich in proteins and very energetic. It can be eaten fresh when sold frozen, or in dry form which is ideal for its conservation.
Pollen plays another role: when the foraging bee visits a flower to collect nectar at the bottom of the corolla, it pushes the stamens which release the tiny pollen grains. Some of these grains fall into the nectar of the visited flower and end up in the honey. The analysis of these pollen grains in the honey allows to decipher the honey and constitute its identity card. This analysis, called “pollen analysis”, consists in observing a sample of honey under a microscope: 10g of honey alone contain on average 40 000 pollen grains!

Recognizing a pollen is a real expert work.

We were the first laboratory in France to systematize the control of all our honeys and to set up the pollen analysis of honey. We are recognized as an expert in this field worldwide.
For more than 40 years, we have been able to certify the excellence of each of our honeys and to identify with precision their botanical and floral origins.