Does Dry or Fresh Bee Bread Contain Clinically Significant, and Antimicrobial Agents Resistant Microorganisms?

Bee pollen, which is filled into the cells of the honeycomb by honeybees to use in nutrition, is enriched with digestive enzymes and organic acids from honey and salivary gland secretions of honeybees. Lactic acid fermentation takes place in the comb cell under anaerobic conditions and bee bread is formed. We have limited knowledge about which bacteria and yeasts are involved in fermentation process. Samples of bee bread collected from 8 different beehives in the same apiary and samples of bee bread that were dried for 3 months and stored in the deep freezer were analyzed microbiologically. The 34 strains were isolated from fresh perga samples. No microorganism was growth in dried perga samples. The isolated strains were identified by conventional and MALDI-TOF MS methods. The 34 strains were identified as Aspergillus spp. (12), Rhizopus oryzae (6), Mucor circinelloides (1), Bipolaris (2), Trichoderma (3), Paecilomyces variotii (1), Penicillium chrysogenum (1), Kodamaea ohmeri (1), Bacillus altitudinis/pumilus (3), Bacillus licheniformis (1), B. megaterium (1), Micrococcus luteus (1) and Serratia marcescens (1). MICs values of itraconazole, voriconazole, anidulafungin and caspofungin for Mucor and Rhizopus strains had high (≥32 μg/ml) except amphotericinB, posaconazole. MICs values of drugs for Aspergillus strains (n:9/12) were low (1 μg/ml). Trichoderma strains had low MIC values (≤0.50 μg/ml) for other drugs except itraconazole. P.chrysogenum was found to have low MIC value (≤0.25 μg/ml) for posaconazole, anidulafungin, caspofungin. Bipolaris, P.variotii and K.ohmeri was had low MIC values to all antifungals. The determination of the microbiological load in bee bread samples analyzed as soon as they are collected from the hive allows us to discuss the beneficial and harmful aspects of these microorganisms, while the absence of microbial load in bee bread samples stored under appropriate conditions is striking.