الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract The following study was undertaken to know the effect of rearing season and the age of bee workers on the quantity and the quality of bee venom produced by Apis mellifera L. workers. The experiments of the present work were conducted in the apiary of the Faculty of Agriculture, Ain Shams University. For this purpose, three different ages of bee workers were chosen as nurse workers, guard workers and field workers. Ten stinging apparatus were obtained during the different seasons (spring, summer, autumn and winter), 10 stinging apparatuses were used to collect venom. Sting was roughly removed from the worker, put on glass slide and the venom sac was carefully removed and put in dark glass tubule to avoid venom oxidation. Ten sacs were placed in every tubule, tightly covered and kept in deep freezer until used for chemical analysis. The quantitative analysis of total protein, mellitin, apamin and phospholipase A2 in the venom of workers in two annual periods, i.e. spring and summer as well as autumn and winter were made. The study required application on one common disease, named habitual abortion, such disease causes depression of patients who lose their pregnancies. There are many common causes for the abortion as viral hepatitis as rubella, toxoplasm and cyto-megalo viruses. The obtained results could be summarized as follows: 1-Weight of poison sac during different seasons at different ages: -The heaviest poison sac was obtained during spring season, followed by summer, autumn, then winter. This because the spring season is the start of bee activities season, the clover and citrus crops full of pollens spread in, thus considered as natural feeding full of protein content, so the venom quantity increased during spring seasons when compared to other seasons . -In summer season, cotton and corn were more available, thus providing pollen. On the other hand, the high temperature during summer, reduced the production of venom. -At autumn season, where the crops reduced, increasing the needs for external nutrition -At winter, no working bees found due to the reduction of temperature and the queen stop laying eggs and no nurse bees, all these reason reduced the quantity and the quality of venom. 2-Chemical analysis of bee venom during different seasons: -The total amounts of bee venom were greatly affected by the worker age. The highest protein and phospholipase A2 amounts were obtained in old workers at spring season. While highest amount of apamin was obtained from middle aged workers at autumn season. At winter, no young bee workers found because the queen stop laying eggs, but the old and middle aged bee workers yield the least amount of total protein, apamine and phospholipase A2. 3-The application of venom in women suffers from repeated abortions: -Before starting the treatment with bee venom , results of blood analysis of women suffers from repeated abortions showed increase in the viruses taxoplasma, cyto-megalo virus and rubella IgG and IgM, these women had a course of stinging sessions by using 5 bees weekly. -Some of these cases were fully healed, while others need more stinging courses. Results showed that the nature of women work affects the needing of more stinging session such as working in rearing birds or buying food from street vendors that increase the contamination. -After repeated stinging session with venom, the bloods showed decreased levels of viruses and the pregnancy was 95% while it was 100% in patients at ages less than 35 years which need only 5 courses of stinging sessions. |