Antimicrobial Activity of Bee Bread
Baltić, Tatjana
Rajić, Sara
Branković Lazić, Ivana
Đorđević, Vesna
Velebit, Branko
Lukić, Mirjana
Ćirić, Jelena
Bee bread is natural honey bee product obtained from the fermentation of bee pollen mixed with honey bee saliva and flower nectar inside the honeycomb cells of a bee hive. Also, bee bread is defined as a functional food. Primarily, honey bees use bee bread for brood growing (nutrition), but humans use bee bread in apitherapy according to the bread’s powerful healing properties and content of different molecules. Bee bread contains about 300 different substances, such as proteins, macro- and microelements, lipids, free amino acids, fatty acids (linoleic, linolenic and arachidonic), flavonoids, phenolic compounds, vitamins, and enzymes. Research on bee bread has been rather limited until now. In recent years, there is an increasing interest regarding the antimicrobial properties of bee bread, due to emerging antimicrobial resistance by different pathogenic microorganism. Different studies demonstrated that bee bread inhibited Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria, virus, yeast and parasite. The high antimicrobial activity of bee bread was correlated to the phenolic content. Phenolic compounds are defined as secondary plant metabolites with protective mechanism. They include a large number of phenolic acids, flavonoids, proanthocyanidins, etc. The main phenolic compounds determined in bee bread were quercetin followed by kaempferol, myricetin and luteolin. This review aims to present up to date research findings regarding antimicrobial activity of bee bread.
engleski
2022
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honey bee products; bee bread; functional food; nutritional value; antimicrobial compounds