Honey Bee

Honey Bee

Honey bees play a key role in agricultural productivity and ecosystem sustainability by providing pollination services to crops and wild plants. Honey is a natural product produced by Apis mellifera bees and traditionally used as a sweetener and for therapeutic purposes.

According to the Codex alimentarius, honey is defined as “the natural sweet substance produced by honey bees from the nectar of plants or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant-sucking insects on the living parts of plants, which the bees collect, transform by combining with specific substances of their own, deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in the honey comb to ripen and mature” There is one particular subspecies of Asian honey bee native to the Indian Subcontinent and Sri Lanka. The South Asian honey bee (Apis cerana indica). Dr. Punchihewa notes that the South Asian honey bee has lived in Sri Lanka and the Indian subcontinent for a million years or so, and has constantly been evolving as a subspecies. This type of bee bears many similarities in appearance with its distant cousin Apis mellifera—the European honeybee. Chemically, 17–20% of honey is made of water but this along with the rest of its make-up, flavor and color (which can be anywhere between colorless, straw-like, amber and black  is dependent on the flower the nectar came from. Bees can forage the nectar from one type of plant or many types to make honey and so it can be categorized as monofloral or multifloral (also known as polyfloral).

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How do bees help food production?

Albert Einstein allegedly said that, “If the bee disappeared off the face of the Earth, man would only have four years left to live.” Doom-laden words indeed, even if Einstein himself never actually said it. So why would the demise of the humble bee bring about ecological Armageddon?

Pollination is vital to life on our planet. Bees and other pollinators have thrived for millions of years, maintaining biodiversity and vibrant ecosystems for plants, humans and the bees themselves. Pollinators are essential to the production of fruits, vegetables, oils, nuts and seeds that we eat every day. Pollinators affect 35 percent of global agricultural land, supporting the production of 87 of the leading food crops worldwide. Furthermore, pollination-dependent crops are five times more valuable than those that do not need pollination. The price tag of global crops directly relying on pollinators is estimated to be between US$235 and US$577 billion a year.

Honey has over 200 compounds in it, including sugars, water, organic acids, minerals and polyphenols - the exact structure and composition of honey often determined by which plant source(s) the honey bee took the nectar from. Honey has been used in diets and medicines for thousands of years. Honey’s composition is related to its botanical and geographical origin and can undergo significant changes depending on storage time and conditions.

Chemical composition

Two sugars, dextrose and levulose, are the chief ingredients of honey, with smaller quantities of 22 other more complex sugars, including disaccharides maltose, sucrose, maltose, turanose, isomaltose, laminaribiose, nigerose, kojibiose, gentiobiose and β-trehalose. The trisaccharides found include maltotriose, erlose, melezitose, 1-kestose, isopanose, isomaltotriose, panose, and theanderose. Different plants contain minor quantities of all these sugars.

Many organic acids are also present in honey. These are lactic, formic, butyric, tartaric, pyruvic, acetic, citric, oxalic, succinic, malic, maleic, α-ketoglutaric, glucose-6-phosphate, pyroglutamic and glycolic acid. Among these acids, gluconic acid is the common one present. It is produced from dextrose by the action of an enzyme, glucose oxidase. This unique feature of honey, that is the presence of enzymes, makes it different from other sweetening agents. 
These enzymes are derived from the yeasts, nectar, pollen, bee, and micro-organisms. Some of the most important honey enzymes are glucose oxidase, catalase, acid phosphatase, invertase, and diastase.

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Biological activities

Honey is a popular carbohydrate resource for athletes, generally taken before and after resistance exercise. The lower glycemic index of honey also allows its modest use in types I and II diabetes. It elevates hemoglobin concentration, stimulates insulin secretion, decreases blood glucose levels, and improves lipid profile. Several studies have reported the antioxidant activity and phenolic content in honey and established a correlation between phenolic content, antioxidant activity, and color intensity. Due to the presence of phenolic constituents, honey exhibits anti-carcinogenic, anti-inflammatory, anti-atherogenic, anti-thrombotic, immune modulating, and analgesic activities. Studies have also shown that natural honey decreases cardiovascular risk factors without any increase in body weights . The inhibitory effects of honey against 60 gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, including aerobes and anaerobes was studied, and it therefore helps in cleaning up wounds. Apart from its use in cooking, the anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects of honey make it a useful substance. In the medical papyri of Egypt, back to 1553-1550 B.C., there are signs that honey heals wounds, causes urination, and serves as weight reducing agent. Similarly, Galen, a great Roman physician, regarded honey as a cure for all kinds of poisoning and intestinal diseases. The greatest medical authority of mediaeval times, Ibn-Sina (Ave-Sina) wrote that, “honey helps you when you have a runny nose, cheers you up, makes you feel fit, facilitates the digestion of food, gets rid of wind, and improves the appetite. It is almost a provision for retaining youth, making the memory better, sharpening the wits, and loosening the tongue.

Why are bees declining?

This has an enormous impact on agriculture as many farmers rely on a diversity of bees to pollinate their produce.
Land use changes are one of the main causes of biodiversity loss, including of pollinator species. Urbanized areas and intensively managed agricultural land have reduced floral diversity and nesting habitat for pollinators compared to natural habitats. Since the Second World War, the UK has lost 97% of its wildflower meadows, a vital habitat which pollinators depend on for food and shelter. Parasites and disease, particularly the parasitic Varroa mite and the viruses it transmits, have been identified as a particular threat to honey bees. Varroa mites and viral diseases are known to affect the efficiency of crop pollination by honey bees through the elimination of colonies. Colonies infested with Varroa mites become less efficient pollinators, because they deposit fewer pollen grains on the flower stigma. Insecticides, particularly neonicotinoids, have been implicated in the decline of both domestic and wild bee species. Neonicotinoid pesticides protect crops against pests such as aphids by blocking receptors in the insects’ brains, paralyzing and killing them. In small doses, the pesticides aren’t lethal to bees, but they can wreak havoc on bees’ abilities to navigate, find food, reproduce, and form new colonies.



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