Forms: 1 béa-, béo-, bí-bread, 2 bei-; 7– bee-bread. [f. BEE + BREAD: cf. MHG. bîe brôt, G. bienen brot. The modern word is probably a new combination, not historically related to the OE., which had also a different sense.]
† 1. orig. In OE. as in the other Teutonic languages: Honey-comb with the honey in it. Obs.
c. 825. Vesp. Psalter, cxviii. 103. Hu swoete … ofer huniʓ & biabread.
a. 1000. Boeth. Metr., xii. 17. Þynceþ … huniʓes bibread healfe þý swetre.
c. 1000. Ags. Gosp., Luke xxiv. 42. Dǽl ʓebrǽddes fisces and béobréad [Hatton bei-brad].
2. Pollen, or a compound of honey and pollen, consumed by the nurse-bees.
1657. S. Purchas, Pol. Flying-Ins., I. xv. 95. [Bees] gather as often Bee-bread as honey.
1750. Phil. Trans., XLVI. 538. A Bee loading the Farina, Bee-Bread, or crude Wax, upon its Legs.
1815. R. Huish, Treat. Bees, xi. (1817), 147. The crude wax, which is called … in English Bee-bread.
1816. Kirby & Sp., Entomol., xi. (1828), I. 376. Little or no honey is collected until an ample store of bee-bread has been laid up for food.
1868. Wood, Homes without H., xxiii. 436. Bee-bread … is a compound of honey and the pollen of flowers.
fig. 1870. Lowell, Among my Bks., Ser. I. (1873), 66. He had … been feeding on the bee-bread of Shakespeare.
3. Applied locally to certain plants yielding nectar: viz. the White Clover, and Borage. (Britten and Holland.)
