Microbial Decontamination of Bee Pollen by Direct Ozone Exposure.

Juan Ramón Cabello,Salud Serrano,Ana Isabel García-Valcárcel,María Dolores Hernando,José Manuel Flores,Inmaculada Rodríguez

doi:10.3390/foods10112593

Abstract

The bee pollen is a complete and healthy food with important nutritional properties. Usually, bee pollen is consumed dehydrated, but it is possible to market it as fresh frozen pollen, favoring the maintenance of its properties and greatly increasing its palatability, compared to dried pollen. However, fresh frozen pollen maintains a high microbiological load that can include some pathogenic genus to human health. In this work, ozonation combined with drying is applied to reduce the microbiological load. The lowest timing exposure to ozone (30 min) was chosen together with hot-air drying during 15 min to evaluate the shelf-life of treated bee-pollen under cold storage (4 °C), and initial reductions of 3, 1.5, and 1.7 log cycles were obtained for Enterobacteriaceae, mesophilic aerobes, and molds and yeasts counting, respectively. Six weeks after treatment the microbial load was held at a lower level than initially observed in fresh bee-pollen. In addition, ozone treatment did not have a negative impact on the polyphenols evaluated. Likewise, the sensory profile of the bee pollen under different treatments was studied. For all these assays the results have been favorable, so we can say that ozonation of fresh pollen is safe for human consumption, which maintains its polyphenols composition and organoleptically is better valued than dried pollen.

Highlights

The lowest timing exposure to ozone together with hot-air drying during 15 min was chosen to evaluate the shelf-life of treated bee-pollen and cold storage (4 ◦ C)
Last evaluation was carried out six weeks after treatment and the microbial load continued increasing, it was held at a lower level than initially observed in fresh bee-pollen
The obtained results indicate that ozone treatment did not have a negative impact on polyphenols evaluated in the present work which makes ozone exposure a potential treatment for bee-pollen

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. In every honey bee colony, there are three castes: queen, workers, and drones. Honey bees’ colonies are permanent, survive the winter and, in favorable environment, they are reported to live up to several years. While floral nectar and other plant secretions provide the colony with the main source of sugars, pollen supplies proteins, fats, and other nutrients. Honey bees need to stock up on food to cope with adverse conditions. Because of this, they collect plenty of nectar and pollen, which later on are stored in empty comb cells, as honey and beebread, respectively

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