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 Together with a brewery, the scientists who have long studied bees
and their honey, have launched their own mead drink - Honey Hunter's
Elixir.
Lund University researcher Tobias Olofsson said mead had a long
track record in bringing positive effects on health.
"Mead is an alcoholic drink made with just honey and water and it
was regarded as the drink of the gods and you could become immortal
or sustain a better health if you drank it. It was drunk by the
Vikings for example and other cultures such as the Mayas, the
Egyptians and it was a drink that was regarded as a very beneficial
drink," said Olofsson.
Honey production is key to the research. In previous research
published in 2014, Olofsson and Alejandra Vasquez discovered that
lactic acid bacteria found in the honey stomach of bees, mixed with
honey itself, could cure chronic wounds in horses that had proved
resistant to treatment.
They said their research had proven that these bacteria have the
power to collaborate and kill off all the human pathogens they have
been tested against, including resistant ones. They are doing so by
producing hundreds of antibacterial antibiotic-like substances.
What makes Honey Hunter's Elixir different from other types of
modern mead drinks is that is uses all 13 beneficial honeybee lactic
acid bacteria and the wild yeasts from honey that normally ferment
mead spontaneously.
According to the team, commercial honey does not contain these
bacteria. Since the honey and water mixture is sterilized before
later adding industrial wine yeast, all other life in the honey,
including wild yeast, is killed off.
The researchers say the drink contains 100 billion of these 13
different living and collaborating lactic acid bacteria
Olofsson said they believed mead could have been the most efficient
historical equivalent to today's antibiotics and they see Honey
Hunter's Elixir as a possible way of preventing infections.
"Well, we've seen in our research that the honey bees actually add
great flora of lactic acid bacteria in honey so the mead, when
produced, is actually fermented by these lactic acid bacteria
together with wild yeasts and the lactic acid bacteria can really
kill off all the dangerous pathogens that are even resistant against
antibiotics. So our thinking is that the mead, when you consume the
mead, these (antibacterial substances in) lactic acid bacteria in
the drink can actually be transferred to your blood and help you
when you are infected with dangerous bacteria or promote health,
preventing infections," Olofsson said.
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In 2005 Olofsson and Vasquez discovered that many beneficial
bacteria reside within honey-bees in a structure called honey crop,
which is the organ where honeybees collect nectar for honey
production.
As a result, their research has since focused on how this can be
applied to functional foods, as alternative medical tools against
infections and bee health.
The mead is part of this research which is summarized on the website
http://livingantibiotics.com/
"We will have volunteers drinking this drink and measure different
parameters to see if the compounds the bacteria produce could end up
in the blood system and for that to cause a prevention or a cure for
infections," Vasquez said, adding that more research was needed.
"We don't really know at the moment exactly which kind of infectious
disease we could counteract in the future because we need to
understand this thoroughly. At the moment we know that the bacteria
produce very interesting compounds, a lot of different weapons like
antibiotics but a lot of them that collaborate and those weapons or
the key in use in this viable bacteria in the future," she said.
If human trials are successful it could help doctors overturn the
growing threat of antibiotic resistant bacteria, in both First World
countries and also in the developing world where fresh honey is more
readily accessible than antibiotics.
In recent years antibiotic resistance has become a critical issue
for global health, with an ever increasing number of strains of
bacteria developing immunity.
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