Posted on April 2, 2009 by BioJobBlogger

Cool Stuff: Bee Biotech

Colony Collapse Disorder (CDD) a mysterious syndrome that kills adult worker bees outside of the hive has been plaguing Europe and the US in recent years. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that American beekeepers have lost 37% of their hives to CCD in 2008 after losing 31% the year before. The government estimates that a third of the US food supply may be at risk--$15 billion annually in vegetables, nuts and fruits from plants that depend on bee pollination. The cause of CDD is still hotly debated but many scientists believe that it is caused by a virus

A start up company in Miami FL (my old stomping grounds) called Beeologics is developing a vaccine against all of the apiary viruses that could be responsible for CDD. The company was started by two Israelis, Eyal Ben-Chanoch at tech entrepreneur who helped design the first Intel Pentium chip and Ilan Sela a bee genomics expert. 

The vaccine is pending FDA approval and Beeologics expects it to hit the US market this summer and sell it for $2 per dose. A hive will need one dose per month and current estimates suggest that there are 2.5 million hives in the US. Not a bad revenue stream!

For those of you who may not know, bee keeping is big business and can be lucrative for beekeepers. I learned everything I know about bee keeping as an undergraduate at Cornell when I took Introduction to Beekeeping in my senior year. It was one of the best courses that I ever took at Cornell because it was taught by an entomologist who was also a commercial beekeeper!   Since then, I have always been extremely fond of honey bees—they are fascinating creatures.

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!

 

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Posted on September 25, 2008 by BioJobBlogger

Honey as an Antibiotic?

As an undergraduate at Cornell, I took a course called "Bee Keeping" mostly because it had the reputation of being a  “gut” course (i.e., easy to ace) and I had a passing interest in entomological microbiology. To this day, I will tell you that it is one of the best courses that I have taken in my academic career. It was taught by a practicing bee keeper who maintained hives in Florida during the winter and in Ithaca during the summer (not surprisingly the course was taught in the Spring semester so that his bees could pollinate the local crops).

Not only did we learn a lot about honey bee biology and social insect behavior, we also learned a great deal about honey and its virtues (we even got to sample different types of honey from time to time). One of honey’s lesser known properties is that it is sterile. This is because honey is extremely hygroscopic and has high concentrations of fructose, thereby preventing the growth of bacteria. These properties led me to wonder in those days whether honey would be an effective antibiotic in certain situations. 

Over the next 30 years or so, I had all but forgotten about the possible use of honey as an antibacterial. Then, much to my surprise, I came across a recent Canadian study which suggests that honey may be useful to treat a variety of infections. Apparently, honey is surprisingly effective in treating bacterial biofilms which are increasingly implicated in the etiology of many chronic skin, mucosal and wound infections. Previous studies showed that honey is effective in wound healing. The researchers who conducted the study also suggested that a “honey rinse” might be effective for treating  "stubborn ear, nose and throat infections."

Interestingly, not all of the honey that was tested exhibited potent antibacterial properties. Canadian clover and buckwheat honey didn’t exhibit any antibacterial properties at all. This suggests that the plant nectars that the bees use to make honey might influence the antibiotic properties of various honeys. It is important to note that the results of these experiments are very preliminary and additional studies will definitely be required to support or refute the use of honey as an antibiotic. Nevertheless, I thought the results were exciting and worth mentioning.

Until next time….don't forget to eat your honey!

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (try beekeeping…its lucrative these days)!!!!!!

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