New standards for European bee products
The European beekeeping industry is facing a myriad of threats to its competitiveness. These include declining bee health, cheap and inferior international products, and a lack of standards for bee products like pollen and royal jelly. To address some of these problems, the EU-funded 'Developing European standards for bee pollen and royal jelly: Quality, safety and authenticity' (APIFRESH) project undertook reformation of the industry by developing Europe-wide standards for these products. The project focussed on three aspects: authenticity of bee products; chemical, microbiological and sensory standard criteria; and health-enhancing compounds. This research was collated into a number of tools, reports and guides for bee industry stakeholders. A quality standard proposal was also completed for both pollen and royal jelly. These proposals covered the required physicochemical properties, as well as the methods to analyse these properties. APIFRESH produced best practice guides for harvesting and analysing pollen and royal jelly. Further, a manual of health-enhancing compounds present in the products was compiled. Lastly, the project developed a computer vision method to identify the plant species and geographical origin of pollen and royal jelly. This was incorporated into a decision support tool to help farmers and distributors verify the source of their products.
Keywords
Bee products, health, quality standards, pollen, royal jelly, computer vision
