# The Possibility of Using Bee Drone Brood to Design Novel Dietary Supplements for Apitherapy
## 3 Results and Discussion
### In Vitro Digestion Study  
The development of an in vitro model to predict bioaccessibility should include digestive transformations of food into material ready for assimilation and absorption/assimilation steps that predict absorption into the intestinal epithelial cells [31]. Bioavailability can be defined as the amount or fraction of components that are released from food ingested in the gastrointestinal tract and become available for absorption in the intestine [31]. In the laboratory, bioaccessibility assessment involves the digestion of food using selected procedures, which simulate gastric and small intestinal digestion [32]. The bioaccessibility of components of the designed supplement (DB + ES), including calcium, hormones, proteins, polyphenols, and reducing power, was evaluated, and the results are summarized in Table 4. For completeness, digestion was performed under identical conditions for the inorganic calcium supplement variant (DB + CC), single components (DB, ES and CC), and capsule shells alone (Table 4). The release of individual ingredient groups in the simulated gastrointestinal tract has been considered separately and is described below (Figure 1). The comparison of the calculated values of the bioaccessibility index (BI%) for both variants of the supplement (DB + ES and DB + CC) compared to pure brood (DB) are shown in Table 4.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline  & **Cage Rearing** & **Organic Farming** & **Average Content** & **Percentage [\%]** \\  & **[mg/100 g d.m. \(\pm\) SD]** & **[mg/100 g d.m. \(\pm\) SD]** & **[mg/100 g d.m. \(\pm\) SD]** & **[mg/100 g d.m. \(\pm\) SD]** & **Percentage [\%]** \\ \hline Al & \(0.12\pm 0.29\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(0.48\pm 0.30\)\({}^{\text{ b}}\) & \(0.30\pm 0.11\) & \(0.0009\) \\ \hline As & \(0.04\pm 0.07\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(0.03\pm 0.04\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(0.04\pm 0.009\) & \(0.0001\) \\ \hline Ca & \(32\),\(362.79\pm 503.94\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(31\),\(417.52\pm 678.54\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(31\),\(890.15\pm 473.06\) & \(96.15\) \\ \hline Cd & \(0.002\pm 0.004\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(0.002\pm 0.001\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(0.002\pm 0.00\) & \(0.0001\) \\ \hline Cr & \(0.12\pm 0.08\)\({}^{\text{ b}}\) & \(0.004\pm 0.008\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(0.08\pm 0.00\) & \(0.0002\) \\ \hline Cu & \(0.13\pm 0.03\)\({}^{\text{ b}}\) & \(0.05\pm 0.030\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(0.09\pm 0.02\) & \(0.0002\) \\ \hline Fe & \(4.30\pm 1.69\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(4.86\pm 1.33\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(4.58\pm 1.33\) & \(0.14\) \\ \hline K & \(48.24\pm 0.75\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(56.67\pm 1.40\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(52.45\pm 2.75\) & \(0.16\) \\ \hline Mg & \(508.73\pm 4.95\)\({}^{\text{ b}}\) & \(457.49\pm 8.15\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(483.11\pm 3.60\) & \(1.45\) \\ \hline Mn & \(0.20\pm 0.09\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(0.21\pm 0.103\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(0.20\pm 0.06\) & \(0.0006\) \\ \hline Mo & n.d. & n.d. & n.d. & n.d. \\ \hline Na & \(87.26\pm 0.54\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(104.99\pm 1.52\)\({}^{\text{ b}}\) & \(96.12\pm 0.54\) & \(0.02\) \\ \hline Ni & n.d. & n.d. & n.d. & n.d. \\ \hline P & \(194.49\pm 2.83\)\({}^{\text{ b}}\) & \(139.68\pm 4.35\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(167.08\pm 2.83\) & \(0.57\) \\ \hline Pb & n.d. & n.d. & n.d. & n.d. \\ \hline S & \(445.83\pm 3.14\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(448.15\pm 12.47\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(446.99\pm 3.14\) & \(1.34\) \\ \hline Sr & \(20.93\pm 0.17\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(32.15\pm 1.31\)\({}^{\text{ b}}\) & \(23.28\pm 1.31\) & \(0.07\) \\ \hline Zn & \(0.48\pm 0.53\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(0.44\pm 0.02\)\({}^{\text{ a}}\) & \(0.44\pm 0.01\) & \(0.001\) \\ \hline TOTAL & \(33\),\(673.82\) & \(32\),\(662.23\) & \(33\),\(164.91\) & \(100\%\) \\ \hline \end{tabular}  
* d.m.—dry mass; n.d.—not detected; \({}^{\text{a},\text{b}}\)—the means marked with different letters in the rows differ statistically significantly.  
\end{table}
Table 3: The mineral content of the powdered shells of the eggs of various hen rearing systems.