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From:
Christina Wahl <[log in to unmask]>
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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 16:25:40 +0000
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Randy, thank you for pointing out Nancy Moran and Kirk Andersen regarding gut probiotics in honeybees.  I looked up their work.


Moran works on endosymbionts...these are intracellular, not part of what we think of as "probiotics of the gut".  Not what we (or bees) get when we eat yoghurt (or bees eat pollen).  Honeybee endosymbionts are often, but not always, pathogenetic.  She does mention some that are found in the hemolymph but again, that is not a gut-associated beneficial microbe.  Most endosymbionts are housed in special insect organs called "bacteriomes" which are defined by Wikipedia as:


A bacteriome is a specialized organ, found mainly in some insects<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect>, that hosts endosymbiotic<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosymbiotic> bacteria<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteria>. Bacteriomes contain specialized cells, called bacteriocytes<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriocyte>, that provide nutrients and shelter to the bacteria while protecting the host animal. In exchange, the bacteria provide essentials like vitamins<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamins> and amino acids<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid> to the host insect.


Andersen does work on honeybee probiotics, but these are passed on just as we would expect: from bee to bee, or from the environment...the "yoghurt" route.  Here is an abstract from one of his recent papers, Anderson, Kirk E., et al. "Microbial ecology of the hive and pollination landscape: bacterial associates from floral nectar, the alimentary tract and stored food of honey bees (Apis mellifera)." (2013): e83125.


"Nearly all eukaryotes are host to beneficial or benign bacteria in their gut lumen, either vertically inherited, or acquired from the environment. While bacteria core to the honey bee gut are becoming evident, the influence of the hive and pollination environment on honey bee microbial health is largely unexplored. Here we compare bacteria from floral nectar in the immediate pollination environment, different segments of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) alimentary tract, and food stored in the hive (honey and packed pollen or "beebread"). We used cultivation and sequencing to explore bacterial communities in all sample types, coupled with culture-independent analysis of beebread. We compare our results from the alimentary tract with both culture-dependent and culture-independent analyses from previous studies. Culturing the foregut (crop), midgut and hindgut with standard media produced many identical or highly similar 16S rDNA sequences found with 16S rDNA clone libraries and next generation sequencing of 16S rDNA amplicons. Despite extensive culturing with identical media, our results do not support the core crop bacterial community hypothesized by recent studies. We cultured a wide variety of bacterial strains from 6 of 7 phylogenetic groups considered core to the honey bee hindgut. Our results reveal that many bacteria prevalent in beebread and the crop are also found in floral nectar, suggesting frequent horizontal transmission. From beebread we uncovered a variety of bacterial phylotypes, including many possible pathogens and food spoilage organisms, and potentially beneficial bacteria including Lactobacillus kunkeei, Acetobacteraceae and many different groups of Actinobacteria. Contributions of these bacteria to colony health may include general hygiene, fungal and pathogen inhibition and beebread preservation. Our results are important for understanding the contribution to pollinator health of both environmentally vectored and core microbiota, and the identification of factors that may affect bacterial detection and transmission, colony food storage and disease susceptibility."


Thus, I continue to challenge you to provide information that probiotics of the gut are not dependent on diet, as has been shown to be true in humans, thus it will probably also be true for bees.  Can you provide evidence to the contrary?


Christina


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