The venom of an angry bee is more powerful than that of a docile one, according to new research by Australia's Curtin University.
Dr Daniela Scaccabarozzi and her team studied the powerful cocktail of proteins within bee venom, some of which have beneficial and healthy properties for human health.
Photo: Ankith Choudhary / Unsplash
A bee excretes venom through its stinger when it senses a threat or attack, or the venom can be extracted via electrical stimulation.
Dr Scaccabarozzi and her team used the latter method to conduct their study.
They were able to explore the powerful cocktail of proteins within bee venom with the support of scientists at Australian Natural Biotechnology and ChemCentre.
The researchers were interested in the active component of bee venom which has been shown to have beneficial and healthy properties for human health, Dr Scaccabarozzi tells Jesse Mulligan.
"Since 5,000 years ago, [bee venom] has been investigated [for possible medicinal use], but just in the last decade it's been explored more and more investigated for research and medical purposes."
Some proteins in bee venom have incredible properties useful in the treatment of degenerative and infectious diseases, she says.
"There's great potential with bee venom, but we didn't know if it would be possible to standardise the production because ... it's hard to predict how to balance the different components in the proteins in his huge and powerful mix."
Dr Scaccabarozzi set out to discover what influenced venom's diverse composition.
"One of the most important causes that influences the bee venom composition so that made the bee venom richer, more dense in protein but also influence how much venom was produced by the bee, was actually the behaviour.
"We classified the bees based on the response they had on the stimulating device, it means that when they sting frequently we classify them as angry, active bees, otherwise if the sting reaction was lower, we classify them as a docile bee.
"We realised that actually when the bees reacted more ... they produced more bee venom, but also the bee venom was richer in protein."
There are other factors that influence the composition of bee venom, such as genetics, type of bee species and the season the venom is being produced in, Dr Scaccabarozzi says.
"Another aspect we found was that temperature affected the bee venom weight and composition as well, and also the flowering period."
Photo: AFP
