THE RESEARCH OF INFLUENCE OF HUMIDITY AND TEMPERATURE ON THE BEEBREAD STRENGTH PROPERTIES
The objective of the research is definition of numerical characteristics of strength properties of beebread granules and their dependence on humidity and temperature for justification of the possible technological operations allowing to take a beebread from a bee cell, and also the modes optimum for their implementation. The beebread is the pollen of plants pressed and preserved in cells of a bee honeycombs. Thanks to the rich biochemical structure of a beebread it is widely used in therapeutic practice at treatment of a number of diseases. Absence of the highly effective mechanized technology of extraction of a beebread from a bee cell doesn't allow receiving this product in the demanded quantity. Traditionally during formation of a bee nest for the winter the beekeeper discards from a bee family 2-3 honeycombs frame of a beebread which are subject of rendering wax raw materials. Existence in the honeycombs frame of a beebread leads to losses of considerable part of wax, and also significantly worsens its quality. When carrying out pilot studies of a beebread granule 5 % of deformation were exposed on specially made laboratory installation allowing to register the size of deformation and pressure created thus at various combination of two technology factors to humidity and temperature. Control of humidity and temperature of the studied material was carried out by a standard technique. As a result of the conducted researches it was revealed that both factors have significant impact on strength properties the bee-bread granules which are most expressed at relative humidity less than 17 % and temperature below +10 °C. The received mathematical model allows calculating necessary effort for 5 % of deformation of a beebread at any combination of levels of a variation of factors within the studied factorial space.