In diverse pollinator communities, interspecific interactions may modify the behaviour and increase the pollination effectiveness of individual species. Because agricultural production reliant on pollination is growing, improving pollination effectiveness could increase crop yield without any increase in agricultural intensity or area. In California almond, a crop highly dependent on honey bee ...

Africanized honey bees entered California in 1994 but few accounts of their northward expansion or their frequency relative to European honey bees have been published. We used mitochondrial markers and morphometric analyses to determine the prevalence of Africanized honeybees in San Diego County and their current northward progress in California west of the Sierra Nevada crest. The northernmost...

A volatile profile of ramson (wild garlic, Allium ursinum L.) honey was investigated by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and ultrasonic solvent extraction (USE) followed by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-FID/GC-MS) analyses. The headspace was dominated by linalool derivatives: cis- and trans-linalool oxides (25.3%; 9.2%), hotrienol (12.7%), and linalool (5.8%). Besi...

BACKGROUND The use of honey as a natural product of Apis spp. for burn treatment has been widely applied for centuries. Tualang honey has been reported to have antibacterial properties against various microorganisms, including those from burn-related diagnoses, and is cheaper and easier to be absorbed by Aquacel dressing. The aim of this study is to evaluate the potential antibacterial properti...

Some physicochemical parameters of honey have been introduced by the International Honey Commission to evaluate its quality and origin but processes such as heating and filtering can affect these parameters. In traditional Iranian medicine, deslagging process involves boiling honey in an equal volume of water and removing the slag formed during process. The aim of this study was to determine th...

Gamma irradiation is known to inactivate various pathogens that negatively affect honey bee health. Bee pathogens, such as Deformed wing virus (DWV) and Nosema spp., have a deleterious impact on foraging activities and bee survival, and have been detected in combs. In this study, we assessed the effects of gamma irradiation on the flight activities, pathogen load, and survival of two honey bee ...

A honey bee colony has been likened to an oil company. Somemembers of the company or colony prospect for valuable liquid resources. When these are discovered other group members can be recruited to exploit the resource. The recruitment of nestmates to a specific location where there is a patch of flowers should change the economics of scouting, that is, the search for new resource patches. In p...

I performed laboratory bioassays to characterize the acute contact toxicity of oxalic acid (OA) to Varroa destructor (Anderson & Trueman) and their honey bee hosts (Apis mellifera). Specifically, I conducted glass-vial residual bioassays to determine the lethal concentration of OA for Varroa, and I conducted topical applications of OA in acetone to determine the lethal dose for honey bees. The ...

OBJECTIVES To compare the effects of a single nocturnal dose of buckwheat honey or honey-flavored dextromethorphan (DM) with no treatment on nocturnal cough and sleep difficulty associated with childhood upper respiratory tract infections. DESIGN A survey was administered to parents on 2 consecutive days, first on the day of presentation when no medication had been given the prior evening and...

Background: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the most significant human pathogens that cause both nosocomial and community-acquired infections worldwide which are associated with high morbidity and mortality rates with rapid development of resistance. Honey is one of the oldest traditional medicines considered to be important in the treatment of several human ailment...