Ecol Evol
Departamentul de Apicultură şi Sericicultură, Universitatea de Ştiinţe Agricole şi Medicină Veterinară Calea Mănăştur 3-5, 400372, Cluj-Napoca, Romania ; Institut für Biologie, Molekulare Ökologie, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg Hoher Weg 4, 06099, Halle, Germany ; Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of Pretoria 0002, Pretoria, South Africa.
Published: October 2014
Honeybee colonies offer an excellent environment for microbial pathogen development. The highest virulent, colony killing, bacterial agents are Paenibacillus larvae causing American foulbrood (AFB), and European foulbrood (EFB) associated bacteria. Besides the innate immune defense, honeybees evolved behavioral defenses to combat infections. Foraging of antimicrobial plant compounds plays a key role for this "social immunity" behavior. Secondary plant metabolites in floral nectar are known for their antimicrobial effects. Yet, these compounds are highly plant specific, and the effects on bee health will depend on the floral origin of the honey produced. As worker bees not only feed themselves, but also the larvae and other colony members, honey is a prime candidate acting as self-medication agent in honeybee colonies to prevent or decrease infections. Here, we test eight AFB and EFB bacterial strains and the growth inhibitory activity of three honey types. Using a high-throughput cell growth assay, we show that all honeys have high growth inhibitory activity and the two monofloral honeys appeared to be strain specific. The specificity of the monofloral honeys and the strong antimicrobial potential of the polyfloral honey suggest that the diversity of honeys in the honey stores of a colony may be highly adaptive for its "social immunity" against the highly diverse suite of pathogens encountered in nature. This ecological diversity may therefore operate similar to the well-known effects of host genetic variance in the arms race between host and parasite.
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4242578 | PMC |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.1252 | DOI Listing |
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int
January 2025
Department of Textile Chemistry, Bandung Polytechnic of Textile Technology, Bandung, West Java, 40272, Indonesia.
Kombucha is a popular fermented beverage that involves fermentation using a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) and produces bacterial cellulose (BC). Carbon and nitrogen sources are essential in kombucha processing and BC production. However, studies on cost-effective BC production as an alternative source of leather have remained scarce.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
Laboratorio de Insectos Sociales, Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Recently, it has been shown that sugar‑conditioned honey bees can be biased towards a nectarless dioecious crop as kiwifruit. The challenges for an efficient pollination service in this crop species are its nectarless flowers and its short blooming period. It is known that combined non-sugar compounds (NSCs) present in the floral products of different plants, such as caffeine and arginine, enhance olfactory memory retention in honey bees.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVet Sci
December 2024
Department of Biomedical and Diagnostic Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Tennessee, 2407 River Drive, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA.
This study evaluated the concentrations of tetracycline, erythromycin, and sulfonamide in beef, eggs, and honey products sold at grocery stores and whether standard cooking to 160 °F (71 °C) reduced the concentrations of antimicrobials spiked into the evaluated food products. In June 2021, the concentrations of selected antimicrobials in 65 samples (8 beef, 48 eggs, 9 honey samples) purchased from grocery stores within Knoxville, Tennessee, were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to assess the differences in the median tetracycline concentrations across food types, while the Mann-Whitney test was used to compare the erythromycin residue concentrations between beef and honey.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Infect Dis
December 2024
Central Asia Field Epidemiology Training Program, Asfendiyarov Kazakh National Medical University, Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Background: From June 13-16, 2022, a regional epidemiological department in Kazakhstan reported an increase in acute gastroenteritis cases among people who consumed food from a wedding at a restaurant. An investigation was initiated to determine factors associated with acute intestinal infection and prevent further illness.
Methods: The investigation team conducted a retrospective cohort study among people who consumed event food.
J Invertebr Pathol
December 2024
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, United States.
Corpse-mediated pathogen transmission is a viable route through which naïve hosts can become infected, but its likelihood for honey bee-associated viruses is largely unknown. While these viruses can be easily detected in deceased bees, it remains unclear if they stay infectious within postmortem hosts or if enough viral RNA degradation-and subsequently virus inactivation-occurs post-host death to render these viruses inviable. This knowledge gap has important implications for how researchers perform honey bee virus studies and for our general understanding of honey bee virus transmission.
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