I recently visited Asheville, NC to attend "New Horizons in Beekeeping".

Marla Spivak, Jay Evans, Debbie Delany, and Jamie Ellis spoke there.
Each one shared a bit of their current unpublished research.  I took
notes as fast as I could, but still couldn't jot it all down.  There
were some folks filming it and are planning on releasing it for sale
soon. Didn't catch who though.  When I find out I'll post with information.

Marla covered the importance of propolis from the perspective of the colony 
as an organism.  That in hives with copious amounts of propolis the individuals 
bees immune systems didn't have to work as hard.  She described it as a sponge
that absorbs all matter of material and traps it.  Debbie's presentation was 
on bees in trees and confirmed that bees found in trees will heavily propolize
everything except the comb, including the outside of the entrance.

I've heard and read similar sentiment other places as well.  To my knowledge Marla's
team is the only ones doing research on it currently.  She presented the findings 
of several studies by one grad student.  Most of which she expressed disbelief and
amazement over.  

In one study, the inside of hives were painted with a propolis solution.  Bees with 
known pathogens were placed in the hives and 7 days later, had fewer pathogens.

The same student demonstrated that there are proplis foragers and nectar/pollen foragers.  
That as pathogen loads increase so does the number of propolis foragers.  However, the number
of nectar/pollen foragers does not go down.

These are just a couple of the findings she shared, mostly from my notes.  I do not have
published papers to share but Marla made it clear that she thinks propolis needs much more
study and that it's more important to the overall hive's health than we think.

-- 
Jon Molesa
[log in to unmask]
http://www.beekeeping.cc

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