With the numbers of honey bees decreasing, many people are understandably looking for new ways to improve the natural immunity of these important pollinators. Those that have and use cannabis products have started using them to see if they could improve the health of bees. In fact, researchers performed a recent study to look into this. Upon doing so, the researchers found that there is an actual benefit to using hemp extract in order to improve the health of bees.

Study

The researchers examined the bees’ activities of resistance parameters and the metabolic compound concentration in their hemolymph, which is bees’ equivalent to blood. Basically, they gave the bees hemp extract and studied how much the bees resist natural afflictions, like diseases and parasites. They also examined how much hemp was in their hemolymph. To accomplish this, the researchers divided the bees into three different groups. They fed the first group the control mixture of sugar and water-glycerine solution. The researchers then gave the second group pure sugar syrup with cotton strips soaked with hemp extract inside. For the third group, the researchers gave the bees a mixture of sugar syrup and hemp extract.

Results

The researchers found that the groups fed hemp extracts had an increase in protein concentrations. Additionally, they found a reduction in protease activity. For clarification, the bees that fed on hemp extract had more proteins in their body and less protease. Thes are what bacteria and viruses use to break down proteins. They did find that those feeding on hemp extract on the strips had a decrease in protease inhibitor activities. This means that they were blocking the formation of protease less than the other two groups. The researchers also found an increase in the proteins used to resist parasites in the control group and those being fed the syrup/hemp mix.

Overall, they found that hemp supplementation positively affected the immune system of the workers and even the administration method had an effect.

Discussion

With bee populations declining, the study demonstrating that hemp could help the natural immunity of the insects becomes more important. For clarification, hemp seed oil and hemp extract are usually considered interchangeable terms. There’s, in fact, even more reason to consider using hemp to feed bees. It has been shown that hemp plants offer more sources of pollen to help feed them.

Hopefully, as researchers continue to examine the uses of hemp, they will be able to definitively demonstrate its benefits.

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