Bee pollen as functional food and environmental bioindicator: current evidence and future challenges

Bee pollen (BP), a plant-derived product collected by honey bees, is increasingly promoted as a functional food due to its content of proteins, essential amino acids, lipids, vitamins, minerals, and bioactive compounds such as polyphenols and flavonoids. These components underpin its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and immunomodulatory properties. This review outlines the nutritional and nutraceutical features of BP while also addressing environmental influences, safety issues, and allergenic potential. However, BP composition is highly variable, depending on botanical origin, geographic conditions, environmental factors, and postharvest handling, all of which affect its quality and safety. BP can therefore be considered a 'double-edged' product at the intersection of nutrition, food safety, and environmental monitoring. Evidence on chemical contaminants (including pesticides, heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, and pyrrolizidine alkaloids), microbiological hazards, and mycotoxins is critically examined. Its rich nutrient and moisture content also make it prone to microbial contamination and mycotoxin formation, posing potential risks to public health. The review further explores BP as a bioindicator of environmental pollution and highlights its allergenic risks, which may arise from primary sensitization or cross-reactivity with airborne pollen. Processing and storage methods, such as drying, freezing, and fermentation, are also shown to significantly influence BP quality, stability, bioavailability, and microbiological safety. Overall, BP is a promising nutraceutical resource, but its safe use requires an integrated farm-to-consumer control framework based on improved analytical standardization, stronger contaminant monitoring, better allergen characterization, clearer regulatory criteria, preventive environmental monitoring, standardized harvesting and processing conditions, rapid postharvest drying, multi-residue and microbiological screening, harmonized labeling requirements, and full traceability throughout the production chain. © 2026 The Author(s). Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.