Antimicrobial Properties in Raw Honey

    Two avenues of thought lead us to suspect the presence of antimicrobial substances in honey.

• First, honeycombs are not overrun with "infection." Were that to happen, we wouldn't have any bees today.
• Then we also know that the Ancient Egyptians knew that when they applied diluted honey to wounds, festering would be greatly minimized.

    Your project will come in at least two phases.

1. First, you must convince yourselves that honey does indeed contain antimicrobial agents. You might approach this just the same way labs determine the antibiotic resistances of the various cultures send in. The bacterium is swabbed onto a petri plate, and before the bacteria have a chance to grow, disks of absorbant paper containing various antibiotics are places on the agar surface. Sensitive bacteria cannot grow near the disk leaving a halo - and exlusion zone around the disk.

2. The second phase will see you determine whether the bee put the agent into the honey, or did the nectar of the flowers contain it.

3. Later phases will be chemically and physically characterizing the effective agents - if any. 

   Implications

       Almost all of the antibiotics we currently use come from fungal or streptomycetes origins, and as resistance to them is growing in the bacterial world, we must start looking elsewhere. How is that honey has been resistant to bacterial and fungal incursion for - what? - millions of years? Can we make use of those agents either directly or with some chemical modifications?