Buzzin’ for Bee Pollen
“Bee pollen for environmental allergies and general immune support”. Something I say in almost all of my pet feeding videos. We started using bee pollen about 4 years ago after seeing another raw fed dog post a story of their bowl on Instagram and in that bowl was bee pollen. I was very intrigued and reached out to find out what it was for. They responded with a ton of information, but most of all “and it can help with seasonal or environmental allergies” which was a massive selling point for us.
Holly has suffered from being itchy for as long as I can remember, but it got really bad when she was around 4. I can talk about it more, but to keep a very long story short, she would scratch herself until bleeding and was living in a cone 24 hours a day for 2 years at one point. We tried everything and nothing ever seemed to work for us, but eventually we found a few things that started to show some improvements! One of those items is bee pollen, and I’ll never go without it. I can get into all of the other things, and all about Hollys journey with allergies in another post, but for now we’ll keep things focused on bee pollen.
By the time I came across bee pollen, we had tackled most of Holly’s allergies, which we found out were mainly food and protein-based, but she wasn’t perfect yet. She wasn’t making herself bleed, but she was still uncomfortable. Within about 5 minutes of chatting with our friend about bee pollen, I bought a jar and crossed my fingers this would be the end of our allergy journey.
Luckily, it worked like a charm. It only took a few weeks to notice an improvement and after a few months Holly was barely itching at all. Obviously, there is a whole combination of things that we use to manage Holly’s allergies, but bee pollen was the cherry on top!
Well, now that I’ve officially rambled on about how we were introduced to bee pollen, let me tell you a little more about it!
What is it? Well, it’s kind of exactly what it sounds like. Bees eat two things, pollen and nectar and these two things contribute differently to the colony. Nectar is for energy and is what they use to make honey, while pollen is basically a bee protein powder that will eventually turn into “bee bread” which I’ll dive into more later. The bee pollen you know is tightly packed balls of pollen that the bees collect on their bodies. It’s just the pollen, nothing else.
Bee Pollen vs Bee Bread you may have read that bee pollen and bee bread or ambrosia are the same things, but they’re not. They’re the same base, which is the pollen, but bee pollen and bee bread are used differently and are found at different stages.
Debatably, bee bread is the more nutritions option as it’s a combination of flower pollen, nectar, enzymes, honey, wax and bee secretions, aka bee spit. However, if your goal is minimizing the effect of environmental allergies, bee pollen will do just fine! The collection process for both is also different. Bee pollen is collected using traps that scrape access pollen off of the bees. The pollen then falls into a drawer or basin, so it can be easily harvested without bothering the bees. This process doesn’t hurt the bees at all and still leaves them with plenty of pollen to use. Whereas bee bread is collected directly from the honeycomb. This still doesn’t hurt the bees and it is gently extracted, but you are still disturbing the hive in order to harvest.
How is bee pollen effective? Bee pollen works as a way to slowly introduce your body, or your pets body, to the pollen that is causing the underlying negative response. The body’s response to an allergen is to release histamine, resulting in an allergic reaction. These reactions are usually mild when they stem from things like pollen. For example, runny nose, puffy eyes, itching, etc… but they’re certainly uncomfortable. Bee pollen contains Quercetin, a natural antihistamine, which reduces histamine to relieve the symptoms of allergies. The same thing over the counter medications like Claritin, Zyrtec and Allegra do. Adding in small doses on a regular basis helps to desensitize your dog to certain allergens. Paired with reducing histamine, this can help to reduce the effect of environmental, pollen-based allergies and you have a completely natural method for tackling allergies.
Now, there isn’t much research done on this topic, but that doesn’t mean bee pollen isn’t worth a shot. It’s a perfectly safe option to try. The only exception to this would be people or pets with more severe allergies to bees or bee products themselves. Theoretically, there’s no venom anywhere near the pollen, much less on it. This also goes for other bee products as well. Honey, royal jelly, bee bread, propolis, anything that comes from bees. Most commercially available products are safe as they’re processed and filtered, but more natural raw products have the possibility of being contaminated with allergens as they're, well, raw. Generally speaking, worst case you try it and it doesn’t work - but it certainly won’t hurt to try!
Where do you get it? Locally! To get the most out of bee pollen you want to get it from a local keeper! This way the pollen was collected from the plants that are causing you destress. Great places to look are farmers markets, smaller grocery stores and even on Etsy. Majority of beekeepers collect bee pollen, so if you can find local honey, you should be able to find bee pollen! Personally, we’ve had great luck with a brand called “Bee Keepers Naturals” who has farms throughout Canada and the US, so more than likely not local to us. However, my guess is a lot of pollen overlaps with location, so if you struggle in general, it’s still not a bad option to snag some from a larger shop. I even had a friend send some over from Poland and it also worked great! All in all, local is best, but we’ve had good luck with bee pollen from all over.
What about honey? You can absolutely give honey to dogs! It can provide relief from allergies and irritation, it’s filled with antioxidants, has antimicrobial and antifungal properties and the natural sugars help provide a good source of energy. All of these benefits are true for people as well, by the way! They’re unfortunately not as true for cats. Cats lack glucokinase in the liver, which is a very important enzyme for controlling levels of carbohydrate sugars in the body. Aside from not being able to process the sugars, cat’s also can’t taste “sweet” the way that dogs can, so most of them wouldn’t be interested in trying honey anyway.
So, really you can give your dog, and yourself, both! Bee pollen and raw honey.
I get a ton of comments across our social media platforms about how or why the different things we use “won’t work” or “aren’t worth it”, and bee pollen is a massive trigger for some of these kinds of people. Especially when it comes to the lack of research around if it does or doesn’t actually help with allergies. The thing is, it works for us. It works incredibly well for my dog and my cat seems to suffer less during the warmer times of the year when she’s spending more time on the patio. For me, that’s all the proof I need. I would obviously never use something that could be dangerous or risky without the proof that it works, but for something like bee pollen, I’m not concerned about that at all. If you have a pet that seems to be struggling with environmental allergies, I highly recommend giving bee pollen a shot!