Bee 'Doctors' Nurse Ill Brethren with Medicinal Honey

With pesticides, parasites and climate change to worry about, bees across the country are in decline and often sick, which is why hives have bee "doctors" that can nurse their ill brethren back to health with some medicinal honey.

Honeybees are some of the most industrious insects on the planet, but even they get sick sometimes. That's why each hive has medical specialists known as "nurse bees" that prescribe antibiotic-laced honey to sick workers.

Described in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, if nurse bees become infected with a parasite - which can lead to disorientation and death - they selectively eat honey that has a high antibiotic activity. It's also their responsibility to feed this medicinal honey to other members of the colony to prevent the disease from devastating the entire hive.

In the study, led by Silvio Erler of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Halle, Germany, researchers infected nurse bees with a gut parasite called Nosema ceranae. They were then given a choice of honeys from nectar plants - black locust, sunflower and linden trees - while a fourth was honeydew honey made from the secretions of scale insects or aphids. Each of the honeys was known to have antibiotic activity.

What they found was that the sicker bees were, the more sunflower honey, which had the strongest antimicrobial activity, they partook. It effectively reduced their level of infection by seven percent, compared to the honey from the linden trees.

"Honeys are full of micronutrients, alkaloids and secondary plant compounds that are good for both bees and humans alike," researcher Mike Simone-Finstrom told BBC.

Erler also conducted a related study in September suggesting that different honeys target different diseases. For example, sunflower honey is effective against the growth of bacteria that causes American foulbrood in bees, while linden trees are good for bacteria associated with European foulbrood.

"The in-hive worker bees might be in an exceptionally important position to distribute honey selectively in the colony that affects their own health but potentially also that of other nestmates," Erler added.

But honey isn't bees' only source of medicine. They also use resin from plants to help combat fungal parasites.