Bee Venom Provides ‘Collective Immunity’ for Hive

a significant finding... Could this explain the consistency of all the bee products to possess antimicrobial properties?... 

Beyond theAntipredatory Defence: Honey Bee Venom Function as a Component of SocialImmunity

Toxicon,2011 Sep 10

The honeybee colonies, with the relevant number of immature brood and adults, andstable, high levels of humidity and temperatures of their nests, result insuitable environments for the development of microorganisms includingpathogens.

Inresponse, honey bees evolved several adaptations to face the increased risks ofepidemic diseases. As the antimicrobial venom peptides of Apis mellifera arepresent both on the cuticle of adult bees and on the nest wax it has beenrecently suggested that these substances act as a social antiseptic device.

Since theuse of venom by honey bees in the context of social immunity needs to be moredeeply investigated, we extended the study of this potential role of the venomto different species of the genus Apis (A. mellifera, Apisdorsata, Apis ceranaand Apis andreniformis) using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry techniques.

Inparticular we investigated whether (similarly to A. mellifera) the venom isspread over the body cuticle and on the comb wax of these three Asian species.Our results confirm the idea that the venom functions are well beyond theclassical stereotype of defence against predators, and suggest that thedifferent nesting biology of these species may be related to the use of thevenom in a social immunity context.

Thepresence of antimicrobial peptides on the comb wax of the cavity-dwellingspecies and on the cuticle of workers of all the studied species represents agood example of "collective immunity" and a component of the"social immunity" respectively.