Malta has around 220 beekeepers. The country’s name is tied to honey that has been prized for its flavour and health benefits. Local researchers are finding out just how unique it is and some of its powerful properties.

There are three types of Maltese honey. Maltese beekeepers harvest the spring multiflora honey in May, wild thyme honey in July and autumn honey by the end of November. Different flowers bloom throughout the year, giving each honey a unique mix with distinct colour, taste and properties.

To understand how different honey is made, we need to know its chemistry and how bees make it. Honey is a mix of sugars (77 per cent, most of which are the simple sugars glucose and fructose), water (18 per cent) and complex compounds like vitamins, enzymes and pollen (five per cent). The compounds in this five per cent of honey give its flavour, some health benefits and unique character.

A bee makes honey by foraging for nectar from flowers. It stores it in its honey stomach or crop while flying back to the hive. At the hive it regurgitates the nectar into the crop of a processor bee.

The processor bee takes the honey into the hive’s interior. Then it finds one honeycomb cell from thousands to fill up. To the nectar, the bee adds an enzyme called invertase that helps mature the nectar into honey. The water in the nectar needs to be reduced. So the bees help evaporation by fanning their wings over the nectar to dry it.

Maltese honey stands out. Research recently published in Xjenza, the journal of the Malta Chamber of Scientists, shows that wild thyme honey has some of the highest percentage of thyme pollen of any honey worldwide. Greek honey has 43 per cent thyme pollen; Malta’s honey comes in at a whopping 85 to 90 per cent.

By seeing the pollen mix in honey, you can identify Maltese honey. The combination of flowers that bloom in Malta is unique. The bees will gather pollen from this mix. Through pollen characterisation, you can build a profile for the honey and compare it to the mix identified by local researchers.

Beekeeper Ray Sciberras and University researcher Everaldo Attard are taking the identification of Maltese honey one step further using DNA. “You extract the DNA from the pollen, then see which flowers are in the area. After that you can say with certainty which honey is from Mġarr or Żurrieq,” said Sciberras.

If these advanced techniques are combined with other physical and chemical properties, a profile for the type and place of Maltese honey can be set to create a ‘Malta honey’ trademark. This research is trying to develop a Product Designation of Origin (PDO) for local honey like there is for Maltese wine, said Sciberras.

Through research, one can also catch fraudulent importers who remove labels and sell imported honey as local honey, thereby ensuring consumers are supplied the high quality product they expect.

In 2010, Silvan Spagnol tested whether Maltese honey is more effective than sugar in killing microbes. High concentrations of sugar do kill microbes, but honey is not just sugar. The proteins, flavonoids and terpenoids in honey make it a powerful antimicrobial liquid.

Another bee product called propolis also has health benefits. Maltese propolis can also kill microbes. In the lab it was found to be just as effective as other types of propolis and also stopped fungi and bacteria from growing.

Studies on propolis have gone one step further. In tests it has been found to even stop cancer cells in a petri dish from growing. “We have shown [Maltese propolis’] antioxidant activity,” said Claude Farrugia, a pharmaceutical chemist at the University.

Meanwhile, another group of local researchers led by Pierre Schembri-Wismayer found that Maltese propolis can be toxic to cancer cells due to its level of diterpenoid totarol, a well-known antioxidant and antibacterial chemical. The more diterpenoid, the more effective the propolis.

Maltese honey and propolis could be a powerful health elixir, but such statements need to be seen in the right light. These products have not been tested in clinical trials.

The medical power of honey and propolis can be confusing. For wounds, certain types of honey are clearly antimicrobial and useful to kill bacteria without using antibiotics. Studies on the effect of propolis in other countries in mice indicated that it could help treat cancer when used with other chemotherapies, but the latest clinical studies show it does not work for colon cancer and chemotherapy-induced mouth ulcers. On the other hand, a small clinical study in Egypt showed that honey could treat such ulcers. These are baffling results.

Why do some types of honey seem to work while others do not? Researchers need to uncover which chemical, or mix of chemicals in honey and propolis are needed to fight diseases. Afterwards clinical trials are needed to find out if it works in the real world. This rigour is needed to prevent lives being lost when dealing with serious diseases.

Dr Edward Duca is editor of Think magazine http://bit.ly/ISSUUThink08 and project manager of Science in the City. A more detailed version of this story is published in the latest edition of Think magazine available online at http://bit.ly/BeesThink .

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