Organic Raw Bee Pollen

Bee pollen earns its place here as a protein feed. Depending on which flowers the bees were working, it runs somewhere between ten and forty per cent protein by dry weight, carries all the essential amino acids, and sits at roughly one to thirteen per cent fat. For animals whose staple is dead leaves and rotting wood, that is a dense parcel of exactly the thing their staple is short of, and protein is what limits growth and brood size in most of the genera we sell.

Two claims have come off this page. The first is vitamin D. It appears in several published reviews of bee pollen, but following the citations back, they all lead to the same place: a 1987 analysis of pine pollen, which is wind-blown conifer pollen and not what a bee brings home. We could not find a single modern measurement of vitamin D in bee-collected pollen. The second is calcium. There is some in there, but at a level that would not register against what a moulting isopod needs, and only a fraction of it is available anyway. Keep the cuttlebone in the tub; pollen is not a substitute for it.

Who it suits

Protein-hungry species take it fastest. The Porcellio respond well, particularly the big Spanish ones and the laevis morphs, and so do fast-turnover Porcellionides cultures where the colony is only ever as good as what you put into it. It is arguably most valuable at the slow end, on Cubaris and other species where broods are small and infrequent and every one counts. Springtails, millipedes and pet roaches all take it too, so a bag stretches across a mixed collection. Ardentiella are the one group where the reports conflict: some keepers feed pollen as part of a supplemental diet, other breeders list it among the foods theirs refuse outright, and nothing has been published on the genus either way. Put a little in and watch what happens instead of assuming.

A pinch is enough. Put it on a dish or straight onto bare substrate where you can see it, and clear away whatever has not gone within a couple of days, because pollen will mould if it sits in a damp corner. Offer it alongside the usual diet rather than in place of it. Supplied as raw granules with nothing added, and stored sealed, cool and dry a bag lasts most keepers months. For where it sits in a complete diet, see what isopods eat; dried silkworm pupae are the higher-fat option to rotate against.