article · PLoS ONE
Bee pollen gathered across all four seasons in eastern Saudi Arabia varies significantly in its protein and amino acid profiles. Samples harvested in spring possess the highest levels of crude protein, total amino acids, leucine, glutamic acid, valine, isoleucine, threonine, and glycine. Winter harvests contain the highest amounts of lysine, phenylalanine, tryptophan, arginine, tyrosine, cysteine, and threonine. Autumn yields the peak levels of histidine, methionine, and serine, whilst summer samples show the greatest concentrations of aspartic acid, proline, and alanine. Across all seasons, methionine serves as the first limiting amino acid for both humans and honeybees. Several essential amino acids exceed the nutritional requirements of adult humans and honeybees, notably in spring and winter. Consequently, bee pollen gathered during spring and winter represents a nutritious food source suitable for human diets and honeybee feeding.
Understanding how seasonal shifts alter the nutritional profile of bee pollen helps beekeepers and food producers optimise harvesting times. Demonstrating that spring and winter collections provide essential amino acids that meet or exceed human and honeybee dietary requirements supports the use of bee pollen as a reliable natural supplement, while also pinpointing methionine as a key dietary limitation across all seasons.
This research provides applied baseline data for food industry processors and apiculture businesses seeking to market bee pollen as a dietary supplement or managed bee feed. By establishing spring and winter as optimal harvesting periods, producers can standardise raw material quality. The findings represent early-stage compositional testing, meaning further processing, formulation, and stability testing would be required prior to commercial product rollout.
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Bee pollen is a natural product that has valuable nutritional and medicinal characteristics and has recently garnered increasing attention in the food industry due to its nutritive value. Here, we harvested pollen loads from the Al-Ahsa oasis in eastern Saudi Arabia during spring, summer, autumn, and winter in 2018/2019 to compare the nutritional value of bee pollen protein with the amino acid requirements of honeybees and adult humans. Based on the nutritional value of bee pollen protein, the optimal season for harvesting bee pollen was determined. The composition of the bee pollen showed the highest contents of crude protein, total amino acids, leucine, glutamic acid, valine, isoleucine, threonine, and glycine in samples collected in spring. The highest contents of lysine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, arginine, tyrosine, and cysteine were observed in samples collected in winter. The highest contents of histidine, methionine, and serine were in samples collected in autumn. Moreover, the highest levels of aspartic acid, proline, and alanine were in samples collected in summer. Leucine, valine, lysine, histidine, threonine, and phenylalanine (except in autumn bee pollen) contents in pollen from all four seasons were above the requirements of honeybees. Leucine, valine, histidine, isoleucine (except in autumn bee pollen), lysine (except in spring and summer bee pollen), and threonine (except in winter and spring bee pollen) in all tested samples were above the requirements of adult humans. In comparison with the minimal amino acid requirements of adult humans and honeybees, the 1st limiting amino acid in bee pollen collected during the different seasons was methionine. Bee pollen collected during spring (March-May) and winter (December-February) can be considered a nutritive food source for adult humans and honeybees.
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DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0241393
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