Every day there are many new research papers published relating to honey bees. The team at ATTTA spend a considerable amount of time scanning these newly published papers to highlight the ones that are most relevant to our region’s beekeepers. There have been a couple of late that are interesting but outside our standard themes which usually relates directly to honey bee health. Have a look at the noteworthy examples presented below.
Honey, along with olive oil and milk, is always in the top
three in any list of most adulterated food products. This reputation is bad for honey generally
but great for our local producers who have the best quality and most authentic
honey available. The Canadian Food
Inspection Agency has just produced another report detailing their work to
protect Canadians from adulterated honey.
Honey Authenticity
Honey from Atlantic Canada has an excellent reputation for
its quality and authenticity. This is
not the case with honey produced in other areas and the ongoing battle to
identify adulterated honey coming into Canada continues. Both the Canadian Food Inspection Agency
(CFIA) and the Canadian Honey Council put significant resources into this
battle. A recent report from the CFIA
shows the results of their testing from April 2019 to March 2020. This year’s sampling methods have been
improved with two analyses being used: Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis (SIRA) and
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR).
Samples were collected based on two criteria which were “Targeted
Sampling” or “Marketplace Monitoring”.
This resulted in a combined number of 275 samples with results below.
Targeted sampling*
- Of
the 127 samples collected, 16 were domestic, 111 were imported
- 110
samples were satisfactory by both SIRA and NMR methods: 86.6% (110/127)
- 17
samples were unsatisfactory by one or both methods: 13.3% (17/127)
- Of
these 17 unsatisfactory results, 16 were imported and 1 was domestic
Marketplace monitoring*
- Of
the 148 samples, 103 were domestic, 45 were imported
- 145
samples were satisfactory by both SIRA and NMR methods: 98% (145/148)
- 3
samples were unsatisfactory by one or both methods: 2% (3/148)
- Of
these 3 unsatisfactory results, all were identified as imported
Honey Bee Gut Bacteria
To discover that the honey bee gut is full of bacteria should
not be a surprise to beekeepers. The newly
published research article entitled, ‘Honey bee gut an unexpected niche of
human pathogen” may give us additional specific understanding of honey bee gut
contents. Not only does the gut microbiota
contain organisms both harmful and helpful to the bees but there also may be
some of these that are pathogenic to humans. See figure 1. for all bacteria found by these researchers in the honey bee gut. Along with many bacteria specific to bees, this research identifies two which
are harmful to humans. One bacterium, Salmonella
enterica, is found broadly in our environment. This bacterium has over 2000 serovars, or
distinct variations of the species, which as a group are the leading bacterial
cause of morbidity and mortality globally.
There is a suggestion that this organism, which has very little host
adaptation, is also harmful for honey bees.
Another bacterium, Shigella sonnei, causes disease in humans and
possibly honey bees. It is the causative
pathogen in the human disease shigellosis which results in severe gastrointestinal
symptoms. As we learn more about these
pathogens and their effect on honey bees, we will better understand the overall
health impact. As beekeepers we need to realize
that biosecurity, hygiene and sanitary practices are important to protect our
health and that of our bees.
 |
| Fig. 1. Diversity of bacteria harboring in the guts of worker bees*. |
*Full article https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S101836472030361X
Nosema and Learning
Full article https://academic.oup.com/jinsectscience/article/20/6/29/6000118
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