Protection of honeybee Apis mellifera by its endogenous and exogenous lactic flora against bacterial infections

Abstract

Abstract Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) symbionts of honeybees are certainly playing key roles in their host's colony functioning. The defense against bacterial pathogen invasion by endogenous LAB has been considered as promising and usable phenomenon. This study addresses bacteriocinogeny as one of antibacterial action mode displayed by bacteria. The honeybee endogenous LAB isolated from worker honeybee intestines (61 strains), queen honeybee intestines (16 strains) and beebread (25 strains) were tested for bacteriocin production ability. We checked also well characterized bacteriocin producing LAB strains against bacteria causing American foulbrood (AFB) – Paenibacillus larvae aiming possible use of exogenous LAB for control AFB in honeybees and in the same time to observe the vulnerability of endogenous bacteria exposed to bacteriocin producers. We demonstrated that none of 102 studied LAB strains, isolated from worker honeybee intestines, from queen honeybee intestines and from beebread, produced bacteriocins detectable by the well diffusion method (WDM). All of them failed to inhibit two strains of P. larvae . Three exogenous bacteriocin-producing LAB strains were tested against the same pathogens and against 25 endogenous bacterial isolates representing 11 different LAB species. The screening showed that all the tested exogenous bacteriocin-producing strains inhibited the tested P. larvae strains. The endogenous LAB strains exhibited varied sensitivity profiles when treated with bacteriocin-producing strains. This raises similar challenges to those observed in antibiotic applications leading to dysbacteriosis, even though the efficacy of these bacteriocins against P. larvae in an in vitro system is evident.