Pot-pollen is pollen collected by stingless bee, mixed with honey and bee secretion, and then stored in cerumen pots. Raw pot-pollen contains high moisture content which can lead to excessive fermentation and spoilage. Drying of pot-pollen is needed to preserve them. Typically, elevated temperature can increase the drying performance. However as pot-pollen is heat sensitive, heating above 40 °C is not preferable. Hence, the objective of this study is to explore drying performance of fluidized bed dryer with swirling distributor. The experiment was conducted using three different distributors, a perforated distributor, 45° and 67° swirling distributor, at 1.0 m/s and 1.5 m/s superficial air velocities. The weight of pot-pollen used in this experiment is 50 grams. The drying experiment was conducted at ambient conditions, with no heating being applied to the pot-pollen samples. It was found that 67° swirling distributor at 1.5 m/s superficial air velocity has the highest improvement in terms of drying performance, able to reduce the moisture content from 30.5 % to 18 % for 30 minutes drying time. Hence, using swirling distributor is a suitable enhancement to fluidized bed drying especially for heat sensitive food materials.

Stingless bees or “kelulut” also produce pot-pollen apart from honey. The pot-pollen is mixed with honey and bee secretion before stored in cerumen pots. It has high nutritive value and medicinal benefits. Pot-pollens are often neglected by the beekeepers due to difficulty in storing and preserving them due to high moisture content. Hence, fluidized bed dryer is proposed as a suitable method to dry and enable convenient storage and preservation of the pot-pollen. Pot-pollen sample of initial moisture content 30.5% is dried at three superficial air velocities, 1.0 m/s, 1.5 m/s, and 2.0 m/s for 30 minutes. Fluidized bed drying has managed to decrease the moisture content down to 23%, 20.5%, and 18.5%, respectively. Higher superficial air velocity lead to higher drying rate in of pot-pollen. Hence, using a fluidized bed dryer to dry stingless bee pot-pollen is a promising method for preserving them. Subsequently, the dried pot-pollen can be easily commercialized in the future.