Social immunity

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(Edited)

Lately we have often heard about immunity, and more particularly social immunity, about covid-19 and when our countries will be able to deal with the virus.
But today we are going to observe the social immunity inside the hive. (yes some parallels could arise spontaneously)

The collective immunity, is the first defense of the hive organism, through it most of the pathogens cannot penetrate the hive organism.

The hypopharyngeal glands of bees produce different proteins, which are also used during the processing of honey, among these we find GOX very important coenzyme that takes part in the formation of hydrogen peroxide, which performs a fundamental function within the hive as regards the defense against pathogens.

During the study it was observed that bees with "more tasks" within the hive were able to produce more GOX than bees with fewer tasks. The bee gerchia foresees that the youngest "nurses" feed the queen and dedicate themselves to the production of wax, while growing the tasks increase from foragers, caretakers to brooms, the bees after the first weeks of life become extremely laborious.

From this it is possible to deduce that the queen is actually weaker from the point of view of antibacterial compared to a worker bee, in fact during her life will be fed exclusively royal jelly, and who produces royal jelly, are the young nurses, so the presence of GOX will be lower than the sisters fed royal jelly, honey and propolis.

The local flora factor, however, is not to be underestimated, in fact have been found different percentages of GOX based on the different flavonoids present within the honey analyzed. In fact, through the auto oxidation of polyphenols is generated h2o2, this drift of the various concentrations of polyphenols, these are able to have a potential both pro-oxidant and antioxidant, In case they come into contact with oxygen molecules reveal their pro-oxidant side, we remember that the trofallaxy of bees helps the oxidation of the latter. In contact with pathogens polyphenols are able to degrade bacterial DNA, in fact the amount of degradation of bacterial DNA is inversely proportional to the amount of polyphenols present. Secreted during the processing of honey and propolis GOX’s work is critical within the defense of the hive.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0308814612000684

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-008-1407-4

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-014-1205-z



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5 comments
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(Edited)

Thanks for sharing this information. I did not know that the queen bee was weaker from an antibacterial point of view than a worker bee.

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