Antibiotics in Apis mellifera Hemolymph

Abstract

The western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is a large contributor to the food supply for humans. Over the past decades, there has been a decrease in bee colonies caused by multiple stress factors. A possible contributor to this decline is due to multiple infectious agents being introduced to the honey bees. In some hives, more than 90% of the dying bees contained a gram‐negative bacterium [1]. Honey bees’ immunities against diseases are not fully understood, so to better understand their immunity a method was devised to test for useful proteins and antibodies in Apis mellifera’s hemolymph. Our research begins by extracting the bee’s hemolymph while they are in a comatose state and freezing it. Next, the hemolymph is used in an aggravate solution and injected into mice over a period of several months several months for their bodies to start producing the unknown antibodies. After the immunization process is completed, the mice are sacrificed by extracting their spleen where it is homogenized and the supernatant is extracted and incubated into a media. The hybridoma cells are duplicated into monoclonal colonies and frozen in liquid nitrogen for further testing or continuously grown for immediate testing. The supernatant from the hybridoma cells is taken for analysis where multiple analytical tests are performed to identify which supernatants contain antibodies. Through analytical testing, we hope to discover antibodies that will help researchers better understand honey bee immunity to combat in the decline of honey bee colonies.