BBM MINI bee bread harvester 250 W

01 · THE WHOLE CHAIN

Freeze, mill, separate and dry

The order is not negotiable. First the honey is extracted from the combs and they are left to drain. Then they are frozen at -18 to -20 °C for about 16 hours. Cold wax turns brittle, and that is what lets it break up without crushing the bee bread.

The machine mills the comb — it takes pieces up to 80 mm — and the grid it comes with is for finishing the separation of the remaining wax by hand. What comes out of there is still not finished.

02 · AFTER THE MACHINE

Dry at 42 °C, or freeze

Freshly separated bee bread does not keep at room temperature. There are two routes: dry it in a pollen dryer at 42 °C for two or three days, or freeze it as it is, exactly as you would fresh pollen.

The second is what plenty of people do for their own use: once it is clean, straight into the freezer and used up as they go.

03 · WHAT IT PRODUCES

Twenty kilos an hour, a kilo and a half a batch

Output is around 20 kg/h, but the number that governs in practice is another one: each session handles 1 to 1.5 kg of bee bread. It is a machine for a small workshop and your own production, not for a line.

It runs on 250 W at 230 V and weighs 7 kg, so it plugs in anywhere and stores on a shelf. It won the Gold Medal at APIMONDIA 2013.

04 · WHAT BEE BREAD IS

And why it is not pollen

It is not dried pollen: it is pollen stored and fermented by the bees in the cell, with honey and enzymes, in a lactic fermentation. That is why it sits in the combs next to the brood, and why it has to be taken out of the comb rather than collected in a trap.

That difference is what justifies the machine: bee bread is not harvested, it is extracted.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It is one link, not a complete process: