Drying of bee-bread is an important technological process, which determines the quality of the product produced. Drying of bee-bread is carried out in conditions that prevent the occurrence of irreversible changes in the product, which can lead to deterioration of its quality. These changes are largely associated with the processes of denaturation of proteins and inactivation of enzymes caused by heating of bee-bread during drying at temperatures above 40ºC. Analysis of literature sources has shown that bee-bread is dried mainly either by convection or vacuum drying. Sometimes these drying methods are combined with infrared heating. The disadvantage of the convection drying method is the high energy intensity of the process. The disadvantage of the vacuum method is the high cost of equipment, so it cannot be recommended for small businesses. To reduce the drying time and energy intensity of the process, it is possible to add infrared heating to the main drying methods. But to date, parameters and modes of operation of such a technological process are not defined, which makes it difficult to use it in agriculture. The article presents the results of modeling the joint use of convection and infrared methods of drying bee-bread in the device focused on small businesses. Simulation of the combined drying process was carried out in the program Comsol Multiphysics 5.4. The resulting mathematical model allows determining parameters and modes of the process of drying bee-bread without losing the quality of the product.

One of the most important bee products for humans is beebread, as it has dietary and healing properties. After gathering, beebread has a high humidity -about 30% and it must be dried to 18% state that it can be stored. It is usually dried in convective drying installations. However, most dryers have a common disadvantage -there is a large spread in the drying time between the trays filled with beebread. The purpose of these studies was to intensify the drying process in the first period due to the short-term supply of additional thermal energy. The arrival of increased heat in the first period will allow the source material to heat up faster to the set temperature and start the evaporation process from the surface earlier. The main task was without changing the design of the dryer to recommend a new mode of operation, which would reduce the spread of humidity parameters between the trays. A geometric model of the object of research has been developed for its introduction into the Comsol software product. A mathematical model of the main physical processes occurring in the drying chamber is obtained, which makes it possible to analyze the main parameters that affect the drying rate. The modeling was carried out in two stages. At the first stage, the normal operation mode was investigated with three variants of the supplied thermal power of 300 W, 340 W, and 400 W. At the second stage, a new regime was investigated. It consists in a temporary summing up of the thermal power equal to 500 W for 2 hours and returning to the previous power in all three variants. As a result of the analysis of the obtained data, it was found that the drying time in all modes is from 22 to 30 hours. However, the humidity spread between the upper and lower trays reaches up to 13% with a constant power supply mode, whereas with a temporary power supply only up to 7% of humidity. In addition, in the normal mode, the difference in drying time between the extreme trays was from 26 h to 20 h, when applying increased power, the difference is 7 h. Thus, there is a more uniform drying process for all the trays.

Drying is one of the most common operations in the processing of agricultural products. Improvement of installations for its implementation is an important task, especially in beekeeping in the drying of bee-bread. The article deals with the problem of uneven drying of bee-bread in trays when using convective installations. A method for solving this problem by using trays with holes is proposed. The results of modeling the processes occurring in the drying chamber during the drying of the traditional dryer and the modernized one are shown. Comparison of the results confirmed the reduction of the difference in moisture content between the upper and lower trays in the process of drying by a factor of 3.