Bee Pollen as flour

Hello,

In "Permaculture Techniques" - Pamphlet IX by Mill Mollison, it is mentioned to use bee pollen as a flour substitute.  Has anyone done this? 

Recently I've been eating it as my host has a whole slough of it, but something I read said that an adult should not eat more than one tablespoon or so, per day.  Is this true at all?

Many thanks,

_S

Steven Kraft wrote:
Hello,

In "Permaculture Techniques" - Pamphlet IX by Mill Mollison, it is mentioned to use bee pollen as a flour substitute.  Has anyone done this? 

Recently I've been eating it as my host has a whole slough of it, but something I read said that an adult should not eat more than one tablespoon or so, per day.  Is this true at all?

There is a difference between "taking" or eating bee pollen and using it as flour. There are very few uses of flour in it's raw state, it is generally cooked. I am not sure that raw flour is good for you either.... however, there may be other reasonings too. Things change a lot when they are cooked. As far as I know Bee pollen is biologically active when raw, not after it hits 140F though.

Ah I see what he's saying now in that article, of how to use pollen as a source of high protein very very dense flour.

  You can't do this off commercial bee's you'll probably get quite an irritated gut. When I first read your statement I was like how the hell can I eat bee pollen 2 teaspoon's give's me gutrott for 20 minutes. Then I realized why, commercial bee's are run on monocultural forage, and there not likely to be the types of pollen you would eat as there chaulk full of chem's. The bee keepers are in it for profit's so if a hive get's sick over time he's already made his 85-250 dollar's a hive per crop or season so modern beekeeping is far from organic.
 
  Now let's take for instance a very common source of abundant pollen used as flour that doesn't give you gutrott.  Cat-tails " typha latifolia" so abundant an harvest-able bee's couldn't keep up with your stick and bag. There are plenty of bee forages with enough pollen that both you and the bee's can share, and yes with enough hive's you probably could get off grain's. But you'd have to have some proper diversity amongst your forage plant's that are pollen heavy and don't make you sick.  I don't want a loaf of bread made from 100% clover i'm bound to have an ill affect.

But for instance my back yard is made up of at least 20 bee forages, and my neighbour add another 20 at least. That I could risk making a sandwich out of as there's not one overly dominating type of pollen. I didn't know pollen was different till I looked up allot about what make's bee's happy.  Unfortunately I don't have enough hive's to produce pollen as flour as I dont make a living's worth off of bee's. But in a food forest scenario in the subtropic's to tropic's I could see how bee's would always have enough that you could take a yield from 20 or so hive's and have enough to supplement a small family's needs.

Again not that I want all my grain to be pollen, my dumpling's would never be the same, but when it comes to protein content, it's what bee's are raised on and I could definetly seeing it turning my bread's into meat so to speak.