Charles:


The authors state in their abstract the following:
"Our results suggest that bees receive nutritional components from honey that are not provided by alternative food sources widely used in apiculture."


If this is not "bee food" research, as you claim, then the authors shouldn't say that it is.


At the end of the introduction, they say:


"Moreover, there is growing evidence that constituents in natural honey, absent from sucrose and HFCS, positively affect the honey bee's xenobiotic detoxification system21<http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140717/srep05726/full/srep05726.html#ref21>, 22<http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140717/srep05726/full/srep05726.html#ref22>. These results suggest that honey, sucrose and HFCS may impact honey bee physiology and health differently."


This makes it sound as if they think that bees are negatively impacted by HFCS or sucrose, and that they further believe that "natural" honey is better.  My point is if they don't intend this interpretation, then they should be more clear about what they DO mean.


They conclude:


"Our goal was to perform a broad unbiased survey for the effects of honey, sucrose and HFCS on honey bee physiology. Our result that honey - but not sucrose or HFCS - upregulates genes associated with protein metabolism and oxidation reduction is indicative that honey elicits health-related physiological differences.?"


So why does this matter if sucrose or HFCS are not directly consumed in the raw form by bees in the hive?  The authors failed to show that HFCS or sucrose *processed into honey* is any less effective than "natural" honey.  Now that would have been interesting!

They fail to show (or test) any differences among the types of carbs in the forms typically ingested by bees.  If their tenet was to show that PROCESSED forms of carbs, i.e. honey made from nectar, sucrose, or HFCS, activates more genes that help support the immune system, etc than RAW forms of those same carbs, they should have said so, and done that.

That is what I mean about poor review.  This article didn't get the attention it needed before it was published.


Christina

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html