• Food Science of Animal Resources
• /
• v.40 no.2
• /
• pp.221-230
• /
• 2020

The aim of this study was to evaluate the antioxidant and antibacterial activity of Hovenia (Hovenia dulcis) monofloral honey produced in Korea. To produce Hovenia monofloral honey, Hovenia trees were surrounded by a net house, and honeybees were breed there over a 20-day period. Hovenia monofloral honey contained more than 95% of Hovenia pollen and showed physicochemical properties in agreement with the international honey standard (Codex). The total phenolic and flavonoid contents of Hovenia monofloral honey ranged from a 24.82-27.00 mg gallic acid equivalent/100 g honey and a 0.41-0.46 mg quercetin equivalent/100 g honey, respectively. In addition, to evaluate the functional properties of Hovenia monofloral honey, the antioxidant activity of Hovenia monofloral honey was estimated by using the 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl radical and the 2,2'-azinobis-(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) radical scavenging assay. Furthermore, Hovenia monofloral honey showed an antibacterial activity against foodborne gram positive (Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus aureus) and gram negative bacteria (Salmonella Typhimurium and Escherichia coli O157:H7).

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
• /
• v.6 no.3
• /
• pp.261-268
• /
• 1998

Propolis is a lipophilic, natural product prepared by mixing the exudates collected from various plants by honeybees with beeswax for the purpose of using to seal hive walls and to strengthen the borders of combs. Because of its versatile bioactivities, propolis has been attracting many investigators'interest. But the pharmacological studies on propolis has, to date, been exclusively performed for an alcohol extract, there is few information of water extract. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the various effects of water extract of Chinese propolis. The water extract of propolis and its fractions of organic solvents showed strong antioxidative activities, especially ether and ethylacetate fractions, and reduced the lipid peroxidation of rat liver in viro. Additionally the ether fraction of propolis (10 mg/ml) inhibited the activity of hyaluronidase by 50%. In vivo, the water extract of propolis considerably decreased s-GOT, s-GPT and s-LDH activities which represent for the hepatotoxicity induced by $CCl_4$ in rats, and prolonged the MST (Medium revival tinge) and ILS (Increasing in MST over control) by 18% in mice which inoculated with sarcoma 180 ascites cells. These results suggest that the water extract of propolis has various bioactivities as well as the alcohol extract.

• Current Research on Agriculture and Life Sciences
• /
• v.32 no.4
• /
• pp.171-174
• /
• 2014

Agriculture in Bangladesh is slowly transforming to the production of high-value fruit and vegetable crops to satisfy the nutrient requirements of their large size population, and this transformation is creating new challenges as regards improving and maintaining the productivity and crop quality. The country has a declining trend of insect pollinators due to habitat loss, land use changes, monoculture-dominated agriculture, and the excessive and indiscriminate use of pesticides. Such pollinator deficiencies can cause reduced yields, thereby threatening the subsistence of marginal farmers. In Bangladesh, growers enjoy free pollination services from the naturally occurring insect populations. While honeybees pollinate mustard, onions, and melons, many other hymenopterans, coleopterans, hemipterans, dipterans, and thysanopterans also visit the crop fields, making these insects significant for the food security, environment, and economy of the nation. Therefore, attention should be given to public policy, research, and human resource development that promotes knowledge and appreciation of the conservation and utilization of insect pollinators.

• International Journal of Industrial Entomology and Biomaterials
• /
• v.34 no.2
• /
• pp.23-31
• /
• 2017

Bumblebees, more efficient than honeybees, provide important services for pollination especially in tomato, pepper, cucumber, strawberries and other crops grown under tunnel farming or glasshouse conditions to yield maximization. These bees require pollen and nectar to meet their dietary needs and maintain their colony structure, development and reproduction. Keeping in view their economic importance, the effect of five concentrations of sugar and honey solutions (1:1, 1:1.5, 1:2, 2:1,1.5:1) each as alternative to nectar were used to observe their effect on life history parameters of Bombus terrestris. The 1:1 ratio of sugar solution was found most effective followed by 1.5:1, 1:1.5, 1:2 and 2:1 and also more effective of all five concentrations of honey solutions on all three stages of colony development i.e., at colony initiation, colony development and colony maturation stages. At colony initiation stage, early pre-oviposition period ($6.40{\pm}0.97$ days), early emergence of first worker in the first batch ($25.40{\pm}1.21$ days) and maximum numbers of workers ($6.20{\pm}0.24$) emergence in the first batch were observed at 1:1 ratio of sugar solution. Colonies reared on 1:1 ratio of sugar solution reached earlier ($52.13{\pm}1.28$ days) at colony foundation stage with minimum mortality ($3.27{\pm}0.54$ workers). At colony maturation stage, maximum numbers of workers, sexual (males, queens) and maximum mother queen longevity was observed at the same 1:1 ratio of sugar solution. It can be suggested from present study that sugar solution as alternative of nectar at 1:1 ratio was better than other sugar concentration levels and also from those of honey solution.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Service
• /
• v.41 no.3
• /
• pp.171-177
• /
• 2018

Purified bee venom was collected from colonies of honeybees (Apis mellifera L.) using a bee venom collector under sterile conditions and then purified under strict laboratory conditions. Purified bee venom contained $63.9{\pm}5.4%$ melittin, $10.9{\pm}1.6%$ phospholipase A2, and $2.3{\pm}0.3%$ apamin. Purified bee venom has various anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory and immunostimulating effects. In this study, we evaluated purified bee venom which are mammary gland cells, MAC-T cells are used to increase the synthesis of milk protein. Purified bee venom promoted the proliferation of MAC-T cells at concentrations below $1{\mu}g/mL$, but cytotoxicity at $10{\mu}g/mL$ and above. As a result of the increase in the synthesis of ${\beta}-casein$, a milk protein after treatment with MAC-T cells at a concentration of the bee venom without cytotoxicity, the ${\beta}-casein$ content in the cell culture was increased when treated at a concentration of 1 ng/mL or more. In addition, it was confirmed that purified bee venom significantly increased the expression of bovine ${\beta}-casein$ (bCSNB) mRNA, a ${\beta}-casein$ synthesis gene, at a concentration of 1 ng/mL or more. These results suggest that purified bee venom can be used to increase the production of livestock by ultimately increasing the expression of milk protein.

• International Journal of Industrial Entomology and Biomaterials
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.209-213
• /
• 2012

The propolis was collected from the whole part of Korea Peninsula, such as central, southern, and Jeju island, to analyze the general composition including total flavonoid and phenolic contents, heavy metals, colors, amino acids, and crude lipid. The total flavonoid and phenolic contents of middle region in Korea Peninsula (4.26% and 13.06 g/100 g gallic acid) were higher than southern region (2.53%, 10.9 g/100 g gallic acid) and Jeju island (0.03%, 7.22g/100 g gallic acid), respectively. The heavy metals contents showed that Zn contents were found in $0.44{\pm}0.2ppm$ and a harmful heavy metal such as Cr, Cd, Pb, Ni, Cu, As, and Hg were not detected at all in our experiment. The colors of extracted propolis showed a various spectrum from yellow to red purple. Various amino acids were also detected as proline, valine, methionine and the average crude lipid contents of propolis were 42.4%. All data collected in South Korea were very first executed in our institution for the purposes of utilizing and developing the industrial insects, honeybees as well as silkworm.

• Korean Journal of Food Science and Technology
• /
• v.31 no.5
• /
• pp.1153-1158
• /
• 1999

Propolis is a resinous bee-hive product that honeybees collect from plant exudates, flower and leaves. Flavor characteristics of two varieties of propolis collected from different plant origins, falseacacia(Robinia psedoacacia L.) and chestnut tree(Castanea crenata), were analyzed using Aroma Scan and GC/MS. Two varieties of propolis were grouped with quite different aroma profiles by Aroma Scan. Fifty five flavor compounds were identified by GC/MS, of which 44 compounds were found from the propolis of falseacacia and 47 compounds from chestnut tree. Five aldehydes, eight alcohols. five ketones, three esters, one fatty acid, twenty seven hydrocarbons. two terpenes and four phenolic derivatives were identified. Thirty six compounds including benzaldehyde, cinnamyl alcohol, eudesmol and benzyl benzoate were detected in both propolis, eight compounds including geraniol and n-undecane only in propolis of falseacacia and eleven compounds including piperitenone and valencene only in chestnut tree.

• International Journal of Oral Biology
• /
• v.41 no.4
• /
• pp.253-262
• /
• 2016

Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans) is one of the most important bacteria in the formation of dental plaque and dental caries. S. mutans adheres to an acquired pellicle formed on the tooth surface, and aggregates with many oral bacteria. It initiates plaque formation by synthesizing glucan from sucrose, which is catalyzed by glucosyltransferases. Propolis is a resinous mixture produced by honeybees, by mixing saliva and beeswax with secretions gathered from wood sap and flower pollen. Bees prevent pathogenic invasions by coating the propolis to the outer and inner surface of the honeycomb. Propolis has traditionally been used for the treatment of allergic rhinitis, asthma and dermatitis. We investigated the inhibitory effects of propolis ethanol extract on biofilm formation and gene expression of S. mutans. The biofilm formation of S. mutans was determined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and safranin staining. We observed that the extract of propolis had an inhibitory effect on the formation of S. mutans biofilms at concentrations higher than 0.2 mg/ml. Real-time PCR analysis showed that the gene expression of biofilm formation, such as gbpB, spaP, brpA, relA and vicR of S. mutans, was significantly decreased in a dose dependent manner. The ethanol extract of propolis showed concentration dependent growth inhibition of S. mutans, and significant inhibition of acid production at concentrations of 0.025, 0.05, 0.1 and 0.2 mg/ml, compared to the control group. These results suggest that the ethanol extract of propolis inhibits gene expression related to biofilm formation in S. mutans.

• The Korean Journal of Food And Nutrition
• /
• v.30 no.1
• /
• pp.112-119
• /
• 2017

In this study, we investigated and compared some chemical properties of Korean natural honeys and sugar-fed honeys for their quality characteristics. The natural honey samples were monofloral from chestnut and acacia flowers, and the sugar-fed honey samples were collected from honeybees feeding on sugar cane and sugar beet. The chemical properties of the honey samples, such as moisture, total protein, total lipids, ash, carbohydrate, minerals, vitamins, and free amino acids were determined. The moisture content was $18.5{\pm}0.9%$ in natural acacia honey, $17.2{\pm}0.9%$ in natural chestnut honey, $19.6{\pm}0.9%$ in sugar cane-fed honey, and $24.8{\pm}%$ in sugar beet-fed honey. The total protein and ash contents were the highest in natural chestnut honey. Maltose and sucrose were not detected in natural honeys but were detected at 2~7% in sugar-fed honeys. The vitamin, mineral, and free amino acids contents of natural honeys were higher than sugar-fed honeys. The natural chestnut honey is the highest in honeys. These results confirmed that the quality of natural honey was better than that of sugar-fed honey. Also, the vitamin, mineral, and free amino acids contents are potential characteristics for distinguishing between natural and sugar-fed honeys.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• /
• v.40 no.4
• /
• pp.203-210
• /
• 2017

Data clustering is one of the most difficult and challenging problems and can be formally considered as a particular kind of NP-hard grouping problems. The K-means algorithm is one of the most popular and widely used clustering method because it is easy to implement and very efficient. However, it has high possibility to trap in local optimum and high variation of solutions with different initials for the large data set. Therefore, we need study efficient computational intelligence method to find the global optimal solution in data clustering problem within limited computational time. The objective of this paper is to propose a combined artificial bee colony (CABC) with K-means for initialization and finalization to find optimal solution that is effective on data clustering optimization problem. The artificial bee colony (ABC) is an algorithm motivated by the intelligent behavior exhibited by honeybees when searching for food. The performance of ABC is better than or similar to other population-based algorithms with the added advantage of employing fewer control parameters. Our proposed CABC method is able to provide near optimal solution within reasonable time to balance the converged and diversified searches. In this paper, the experiment and analysis of clustering problems demonstrate that CABC is a competitive approach comparing to previous partitioning approaches in satisfactory results with respect to solution quality. We validate the performance of CABC using Iris, Wine, Glass, Vowel, and Cloud UCI machine learning repository datasets comparing to previous studies by experiment and analysis. Our proposed KABCK (K-means+ABC+K-means) is better than ABCK (ABC+K-means), KABC (K-means+ABC), ABC, and K-means in our simulations.