Use of pollen proteins as a nutritional feeds that alleviates the immunity of honey bee

Introduction- Honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the significant pollinator of all the plant species. The main dietary source of honey bee are pollen that provides proteins, amino acids and lipids which are essential to adult bee for its physiological development. In addition, pollens have some nutritive impact on health of honey bees. Insecticides and pathogens like bacteria, viruses and protozoans only leads to colony collapse disorder.
Objective- This study has been conducted to emphasize more on the nutritional pollen protein (sunflower, Helianthus annuus and soyabean, Glycine max) uptake of honey bee and to understand the dynamics of nutrition and immunity relationship.
Methods- In this study, protein extracted from the pollens of sunflower and soyabean and directly feed or exposed to hemolymph of honey bee for determining its immunity. First of all, pollen protein was analyzed by using FPLC and then analyzed or quantified its immunity against honey bees using standard immunocompetence assays i.e. total hemocyte count and assessed regularly to study the growth kinetics of hemocytes and also observed its effect in the form of forward (shape and size) and side scatter (granularity of the cell) through flow cytometer.
Results-The results of this study showed that pollen ofsoyabean showed higher amount of protein as compared to sunflower. In addition, there is enormous increased in hemocytes count after infected with bacteria i.e. bacillus subtilis as compared to hemocytes control. In continuation of this study, pollen proteins of sunflower and soyabean showed declined in both forward and side scatter in case of bees which is infected with bacillus subtilis.
Conclusion- Herein, the current study helped us to illustrate the nutritional feed of pollen protein i.e. sunflower and soyabean that will be helpful for eliciting the immunity of honey bee.