Total Protein Content of Bee Bread in Apis cerana Combs and Tetragonula pegdeni Storage Pots of Different Plant Sources from Chanthaburi Province, Thailand

Abstract

Bee bread is produced from fermented pollen. It is a popular bee product with high levels of protein and nutrients. The bee bread samples were collected from eight indigenous bee colonies in Chanthaburi province: three colonies of Apis cerana and five colonies of Tetragonula pegdeni. The study aims to compare the total protein content of bee bread using the Bradford assay and to identify the plant families that are food sources for these bees using the acetolysis. The results revealed that the protein content of bee bread from A. cerana ranged between 1.48±0.14 and 7.03±0.54 g/100 g, whereas it ranged between 1.78±0.43 and 2.60±0.13 g/100 g in T. pegdeni. Moreover, this result reveals a correlation between the food plant diversity and bee foraging. The pollen grains from bee bread of A. cerana and T. pegdeni were dominant in the family Fabaceae, high-protein plants. Besides, A. cerana (AC3) had the highest protein content of the main mixture of Asteraceae, Fabaceae, and Malvaceae pollen. Furthermore, the major plant families in this bee bread were Acanthaceae, Amaranthaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Euphorbiaceae, and Juncaceae. Tetragonula pegdeni had a greater pollen diversity of bee bread than A. cerana, which was dominant in the families Xyridaceae, Dipterocarpaceae, Fagaceae, Poaceae, and Rutaceae. As a result, the total protein content of the A. cerana colonies was higher than that of the T. pegdeni colonies. As a result, bee bread may be used as a protein source derived from bee products.