WASHINGTON One scientists sweet tribute to her father may one day give beekeepers cluesabout their colonies health, as well as help warn others when crop diseases orpollen allergies are about to strike.

Those are all possible applications thatbiochemistry researcher Roco Cornero of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.,sees for her work on examining proteins in honey. Cornero describedher unpublished work December 9 at the annual joint meeting of the AmericanSociety for Cell Biology and the European Molecular Biology Organization.

Amateur beekeepers often dontunderstand what is stressing bees in their hives, whether lack of water,starvation or infection with pathogens, says Cornero, whose father kept beesbefore his death earlier this year. What we see in the honey can tell us astory about the health of that colony, she says.

Bees are like miniature scientists thatfly and sample a wide variety of environmental conditions, says cell biologist LanceLiotta, Corneros mentor at George Mason. As bees digest pollen, soil and water,bits of proteins from other organisms, including fungi, bacteria and virusesalso end up in the insects stomachs. Honey, in turn, is basically bee vomit,Liotta says, and contains a record of virtually everything the bee came incontact with, as well as proteins from the bees themselves.

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The information archive in honey isunbelievable, Liotta says. But until now, scientists have had a hard timestudying proteins in honey. Its so gooey and sticky and hard to work with,he says. Sugars in honey gum up lab equipment usually used to isolate proteins.

So Cornero developed a method to pullpeptides bits of proteins out of honey using nanoparticles a feat noother researchers have previously managed, Liotta says. Once extracted from thehoney, the peptides are analyzed by mass spectrometry to determine the order ofamino acids that make up each fragment of protein. Those peptides are thencompared with a database of proteins to determine which organisms produced thehoney proteins.

A group of high school students workingat George Mason for the summer collected 13 honey samples from Virginia,Maryland. Two additional samples came from Corneros hometown of Mar del Platain Argentina. The Argentine honey was from the last batches her fathercollected from his bees.

Proteins from bees, microbes and a widevariety of plants were among the components of the honey. Peptides in honeyfrom one sample came from several bacteria, including some that normally livein bees guts and a few disease-causing varieties. Proteins from viruses andparasites that infect bees, including deformed wing virus and Varroa mites,which have been implicatedin colony collapse disorder, were also found in the sample (SN: 1/17/18). Those results could meanbees from that location may have trouble surviving the winter when the insectsimmune systems are less able to fight infections.

Cornero also determined by looking atpollen and plant proteins in the honey that bees had pollinated a variety ofplants, including sunflowers, lilacs, olive trees, red clover, potatoes andtomatoes. By analyzing pollen peptides, scientists may one day be able to learnwhether claims that certain honey is made from wildflowers, clover or orangeblossoms are really true.

Whats more, counting pollen peptides inlocal hives could, for example, give allergy sufferers a better idea of whenhay fever is likely to flare in their area, Cornero says. The researchers alsofound plant virus proteins in the honey, an indication of the types of diseasesthat may be stalking local crops.

Next, Cornero hopes to develop a rapid proteintest that would allow beekeepers to plunge a dipstick into honey and rapidly gaugetheir hives health. Having my dad as a beekeeper, I know how beekeepers work,and it would be a great way to honor his work, she says.

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A biochemists extraction of data from honey honors her beekeeper father - Science News