Bee bread is a product of honeybees, which collect and ferment pollen, that contains highly nutritious and easily digestible active substances. However, its nutritional composition varies significantly with fermentation strains and seasonal changes. To unveil the patterns of microbial community and nutritional component changes in bee bread across seasons, we employed high-throughput techniques to assess the diversity of bacteria and fungi in bee bread. The results indicated that the compositions of bacteria and fungi in bee bread undergo significant seasonal variation, with noticeable changes in the microbial diversity of bee bread from different bee species. Subsequently, metabolomic analysis revealed high activity of glycerophospholipid metabolism in bee bread. Furthermore, our analysis identifaied noteworthy differences in nutritional components, including pH values, sugar content, and free amino acid levels, in bee bread across different seasons.

Recently, functional foods have been a subject of great interest in dietetics owing not only to their nutritional value but rather their myriad of health benefits. Moreover, an increase in consumers\' demands for such valuable foods warrants the development in not only production but rather tools of quality and nutrient assessment. Bee products, viz., pollen (BP) and bread, are normally harvested from the flowering plants with the aid of bees. BP is further subjected to a fermentation process in bee hives to produce the more valuable and bioavailable BB. Owing to their nutritional and medicinal properties, bee products are considered as an important food supplements rich in macro-, micro-, and phytonutrients. Bee products are rich in carbohydrates, amino acids, vitamins, fatty acids, and minerals in addition to a myriad of phytonutrients such as phenolic compounds, anthocyanins, volatiles, and carotenoids. Moreover, unsaturated fatty acids (USFAs) of improved lipid profile such as linoleic, linolenic, and oleic were identified in BP and BB. This work aims to present a holistic overview of BP and BB in the context of their composition and analysis, and to highlight optimized extraction techniques to maximize their value and future applications in nutraceuticals.

Beside honey, honeybees (Apis mellifera L.) are able to produce many byproducts, including bee pollen, propolis, bee bread, royal jelly, and beeswax. Even if the medicinal properties of these byproducts have been recognized for thousands of years by the ancient civilizations, in the modern era, they have a limited use, essentially as nutritional supplements or health products. However, these natural products are excellent sources of bioactive compounds, macro- and micronutrients, that, in a synergistic way, confer multiple biological activities to these byproducts, such as, for example, antimicrobial, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties. This work aims to update the chemical and phytochemical composition of bee pollen, propolis, bee bread, royal jelly, and beeswax and to summarize the main effects exerted by these byproducts on human health, from the anticancer and immune-modulatory activities to the antidiabetic, hypolipidemic, hypotensive, and anti-allergic properties.

A novel facultatively anaerobic, Gram-stain-positive, non-motile, non-spore-forming, catalase-negative bacterium of the genus Lactobacillus, designated strain Bb 2-3T, was isolated from bee bread of Apis cerana collected from a hive in Kunming, China. The strain was regular rod-shaped. Optimal growth occurred at 37 °C, pH 6.5 with 5.0 g l-1 NaCl. The predominant fatty acids were C18 : 1ω9c, C16 : 0 and C19 : 0 iso. Respiratory quinones were not detected. Seven glycolipids, three lipids, phosphatidylglycerol and diphosphatidylglycerol were detected. The peptidoglycan type A4α l-Lys-d-Asp was determined. Strain Bb 2-3T was closely related to Lactobacillus bombicola DSM 28793T, Lactobacillus apis LMG 26964T and Lactobacillus helsingborgensis DSM 26265T, with 97.8, 97.6 and 97.0 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, respectively. A comparison of two housekeeping genes, rpoA and pheS, revealed that strain Bb 2-3T was well separated from the reference strains of species of the genus Lactobacillus. The average nucleotide identity between strain Bb 2-3T and the type strains of closely related species was lower than the 95-96 % threshold value for delineation of genomic prokaryotic species. The G+C content of the genomic DNA of strain Bb 2-3T was 37.4 mol%. On the basis of phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and phylogenetic analyses, strain Bb 2-3T is proposed to represent a novel species of the genus Lactobacillus, for which we propose the name Lactobacillus panisapium sp. nov. The type strain is Bb 2-3T (=DSM 102188T=ACCC 19955T).