Source: Radio New Zealand
Hives in Te Urewera. Supplied/Bioeconomy Science Institute
A collaboration between apicultural scientists and a Māori land trust in Te Urewera is shedding light on the potential health benefits of propolis, or “bee glue”.
Working in partnership with Manawa Honey NZ – a business founded and run by Tuawhenua Trust – scientists at the Bioeconomy Science Institute have been investigating whether compounds from native plants contribute unique properties to propolis.
Apicultural scientist Michelle Taylor said propolis is the plant resin that honeybees collect which they mix with their salivary enzymes, beeswax and pollen.
“It’s completely different to honey, so it’s essentially bee glue. And so what they do is they use it to seal holes in their hives so that they can manage the airflow and also protect their hives from intruders that might [include] other insects or lizards or hedgehogs – or humans.”
As part of the research honey bee hives were placed on Tuawhenua Trust lands near Ruatāhuna, at the heart of Te Urewera last Autumn. The team from Manawa Honey supported scientists with the collection of native plant samples within 1500 metres of the site and propolis collection from the hives.
Analysis revealed that both plant and propolis samples contained a wide range of compounds, with the majority of major compound peaks in propolis also present in many plant samples.
Taylor said they analysed 33 native plant species, including miro, rimu and totara. The complexity of the chemical composition was an exciting surprise, as New Zealand propolis had been previously identified as poplar type, she said.
Bees in an old glass observation box Supplied/Bioeconomy Science Institute
“What we’d like to do is really understand what our propolis actually is. So, if you go out into where beehives are, you’ll often see that there’s a lot of native bush around these hives – so they’re not collecting poplar at all. They’re collecting native bush, and so that’s what we were wanting to understand, whether there actually was a difference. And our research shows that there is.”
Taylor said research on New Zealand propolis is still in its early stages, but it is recognised for its healing properties, especially in wound care, as an antimicrobial agent and as a natural immune function booster.
She is particularly interested in the connection between propolis and improved glycemic control and reduced insulin resistance.
“New Zealand has so many cases of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, so we would really like to determine whether the properties and propolis from our native plants could be part of the therapy for these conditions.
“We’re [in the] early stages yet, so there’s no link at all from New Zealand, but internationally there is a suggestion that it could be a complementary part of the therapy.”
Manawa Honey Chief Executive Brenda Tahi. Supplied/Manawa Honey
‘We’re pretty happy with what Te Urewera gives us’
Manawa Honey chief executive Brenda Tahi said their interest in propolis research stemmed from their kaupapa, which was about a future where people were in tune with nature, spilling over into better health outcomes – something that propolis with its medicinal properties certainly fit.
Many Māori land trusts are starting to take up honey production on their whenua, she said.
“The thing about the mānuka industry in particular, in Aotearoa, is that a lot of the land that has mānuka on it is actually owned by Māori, and in the early days of the industry, it was other beekeepers who were having their hives on Māori land to get mānuka honey.
“But over the years, you know, a lot of Māori landowners and people who are interested in beekeeping, or in the honey industry, have taken up the opportunities that relate to their land.”
Tahi (Ngāti Porou) said there was a long tradition of wild honey gathering in Ruatāhuna.
“Each whānau would have a place where the hive, they’d go back year after year be on their lands, and often the hives were in the holes that form in some of our big trees like matai in the forest, and so they’d have to climb up, you know, using a rope system to climb up they’d use a kerosene tin… that was a container that was used in the old days.”
Tahi said many people were familiar with mānuka honey but that is not the only type.
“There’s lots of other honeys that are produced in our forest, so starting early in the season is hinau, and that’s a major tree in our forest that’s quite high in the canopy and also grows up on the ridges, and it’s got a really small white flower, and it flowers in about September, October, and it produces a honey – but not usually enough in surplus for us to get a pure hinau honey.
“So we get it often mixed with rātā that can follow it, and rātā – though only comes in, say, maybe every seven years – sometimes it’ll come in for a couple of years, but in the bush, you know, we get different honeys each year.”
As part of the research, samples are being taken from native plants in Te Urewera – including climbing rātā (Metrosideros fulgens). Supplied/Bioeconomy Science Institute
Other native plants that bees collected honey from included kānuka, rewarewa, tawhero or kāmahi and tāwari, which Tahi said was often the bees’ favourite.
“We’ve had mahoe honey with our very first honey, but we haven’t had that honey since, and we’ve been going 12 years now, so, you know, it just hasn’t flowered to the extent that it did that year, and in that same year tāwari was off, yeah, so this is sort of the complexities, I suppose, of doing the honeys in our region.
“Most times we’re just pretty happy with what Te Urewera gives us – we love it, you know? Every year is different, and we’ve just got to be aware of what’s happening in the forest, and we really check the flower to see what’s budding, and what’s going to happen, and then place the hives accordingly.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand