1. Inhibition activity of some organic beehive products
on Paenibacillus larvae larvae
Giusti* M., Fratini** F., Bertelloni** F., Cerri** D., Felicioli* A.
* Department of Physiological Sciences Pisa University, Viale delle Piagge, Pisa, Italy
** Department of Animal Pathology, Prophylaxis and Food Hygiene-Pisa University, Viale delle Piagge, Pisa, Italy
Materials and Methods
Paenibacillus larvae's growth has been challenged by using honey propolis, royal jelly and pollen. The experiments were carried out by using ATCC 9545 Paenibacillus larvae larvae strain multifloral honey, gliceric extract of propolis, one year -20°C stored royal jelly and frozen honeybee pollen loads.
Each experiment was performed following international standard Kirby-Bauer method. Both negative and positive controls were set up with glycerol, physiologic solution and tetracycline respectively. In the light of results a method procedure for MIC determination is designed and performed according to the international standard for a quantitative approach. MIC experiment is performed by using a modified protocol of Andrews (2001) and Polatoglu et. al., 2010
Picture 1: Bee hive products used in the trials.
Results
Preliminary results, by Kirby Bauer trials, clearly show antimicrobial activity belonging to tested beehive products with the exception of pollen loads.
The picture 2 shows that microplate as resulted from the MIC experiment. Sample in well’s line A is honey, sample in well’s line B is royal jelly, and sample in well’s line C is propolis.
Linear color change is detectable only in royal jelly and propolis, indicating that antimicrobial activity is belonging to both royal jelly and propolis. Honey had not got antimicrobial activity. Within antibacterial activity of royal jelly and propolis only this latest clearly shows a strong antimicrobial activity confirming the results obtained in the Kirby Bauer method. MIC experiment with this sample of royal jelly convalidates the faint the antimicrobial activity previously revealed by Kirby Bauer method. A B C
Picture 2: Microplate for MIC experiment.
Data obtained with both MIC and Kirby Bauer experiment performed by one year stored -20°C royal jelly show that antimicrobial activity of stored royal jelly activity is low compared to the fresh one reported by Eshraghi and Seifollahi (2003). a b
Picture 3: Strain of P. larvae in Muller Hinton broth (a)
and negative control tube (b).
Discussion
Results obtained by this investigation strongly stimulate to perform new trials with royal jelly different in freshness and content quality and origin, in order to define good parameters for the characterization standardization and optimization of royal jelly production.
References
Andrews J.M. (2001) – Determination of minimum inhibitory concentrations – Journal of Antimicrobial Chemiotherapy 48, suppl. S1, 5-16.
Eshraghi S., Seifollahi F. (2003) - Antibacterial Effects of Royal Jelly on Different Strains of Bacteria - Iranian J. Publ. Health, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp
Polatog K., Demirci F., Demirci B., Gören N., and Kemal H.C.S. (2010) - Antibacterial Activity and the Variation of Tanacetum parthenium (L.) Schultz Bip. Essential Oils from Turkey – Journal of Oleo Science 59, (4)