There is evidence is out there showing that apple cider vinegar is beneficial for human health.
The interesting part is that all benefits seem to be related to sugar metabolism and
insulin resistance weight loss belly fat and blood glucose reduction are just a few of the benefits
However, we don't know the mechanism behind it. Since honey bees also deal with a huge amount
of sugars in their metabolism, I always wonder what apple cider vinegar would do to honeybees.
The use of apple cider vinegar in beekeeping is a controversial topic it is cheap easy to
find in large quantities and apparently can bring some benefits to honeybees as well.
Plenty of beekeepers use it to adjust the pH of sugar syrup
an artificial diet beekeepers make in a time of dearth. The reason to adjust the ph is to
simulate the pH of the natural diets of honeybees, the delicious honey. The controversial part starts
when beekeepers spray a diluted solution of apple cider vinegar on honeybee frames with
adults and young bees in them claiming that it helps honeybees to fight diseases I took a look at
this matter in my research and I found a possible explanation for a potential positive benefit of
apple cider vinegar on honeybees but for a reason that has nothing to do with sugar metabolism
This is the story of John the beekeeper, well this is not his real name. When i visit beekeepers we
have a very important agreement what happens in the beekeeping operation stay in the beekeeping
operation after some convincing he allowed me to share his story if i didn't mention his name
john is a experienced beekeeper in united states taking care of more than 10 000 honeybee hives and
like many other beekeepers out there jump faces many common problems beekeeper are dealing with
lack of good nutrition pesticides and of course pests and pathogens
actually a lot of those in one of my visits john pushed me aside trying to hide from the rest of
the crew and said i want to hear your opinion about something that we do in my operation
i immediately feel weird about it because i know john is not very sharing and always suspicious
about everybody in his operation converto you and other researchers keep talking about varroa
and viruses they transmit as the main problem in beekeeping today and i get that however there is
something that i do that i truly believe is making a difference in my operation i was very curious
and at the same time very skeptical because one of the most difficult things in beekeeping
is the establishment of a universal set of rules that fits every single situation in apiaries
honeybees are not like other farm animals where we can control their nutrition and genetics things
that work in one beekeeping operation very likely will not work the same way in another i endorse
beekeepers trying different things but i recommend proper testing so you can confirm your hypothesis
before you start spreading things around that could be detrimental to the bees to the operation
and ultimately to the beekeeper check my patreon page for more information about this
i know John know this thing so the conversation continued
john said umberto i'm one of those beekeepers that spray apple cider vinegar solution on my base
i'm doing this for a couple years now and i'm convinced it's helping the bees i have reasons to
believe it's helping the bees with mites somehow it does not put them down because i count mites
after application but the bee seems to recover better from mite damage can you explain that
at that time i unfortunately didn't have any information and the story ended there
until last week when i came across a very interesting scientific discovery
as i mentioned before beekeepers use apple cider vinegar in the feeding solutions they give
to honey bees when they need it the rationale behind it is to simulate part of the chemical
composition of honey a natural energy source of honey bees honey is a highly concentrated sugar
solution combined with salt and vitamins and has a ph around 3.9 and 4.5 depending of the plant
source so it is a little acid compared with sugar solution prepared at home which is around 7. so it
makes a lot of sense to try to preserve part of the natural conditions honeybees are adapted to
live in beekeepers adjust the ph of the artificial sugar solution in two ways by adding ascorbic acid
better known as vitamin c tablets into the food or by adding apple cider vinegar to the final sugar
solution but what about spraying these with apple cider vinegar what could be the mechanism behind
the potential benefit of this practice january of 2021 a scientific article published in the journal
science advance brought new light to the apple cider vinegar conversation the article is entitled
capsid openings enabled genome release of ifla viruses and you might be asking yourself humberto
have you lost your mind what the heck that has to do with apple cider story well researchers from
the central european institute of technology in czech republic demonstrated after series of
interesting experiments that three honeybee viruses slow b paralysis virus sacred virus
and the dangerous deform wing virus opened their capsids and released their genome in
an acidic environment after the purification of the samples of these three different viruses the
researchers exposed the viruses to two different ph solutions the ph of 7.2 a neutral ph close
to what beekeepers do when making artificial feeding without the adjustment and the ph of 5.4
a more acidic environment closer to what natural honey is and then they look at the virus particles
using an electron microscope secret virus slow b paralysis virus and deforming wing virus
seem intact in neutral ph of 7.2 however in an acidic ph of 5.4 you can clearly see the virus
capsid opening and their genome being exposed here you can see a computer simulation showing
the progress over time in green you see its low paralysis virus in blue you can see sacred virus
and in orange you can see deformed wind virus but what exactly does that mean and how it might help
honeybees to explain that we need to go back to cell biology and virology 101 here. Endocytosis
is a natural cellular process in which substances are brought inside the cell once a specific
substance or pathogen is recognized the cell will internalize the components into vesicles before
the release of the content into the cytoplasm the cell release enzymes and make the vesicles more
acidic to digest the content once the content is digested then the cells opens these vesicles
releasing the content inside the cytoplasm since the cells need to bring components inside the cell
all the time some viruses take advantage of this pathway to enter the cell starting the infection
you might be asking yourself what about the acidic environment wouldn't that kill the viruses as well
actually some viruses are adapted to that to the point that they need acidification to help them to
open their capsids and release their genome inside the cytoplasm starting the infection process so
when the researchers saw that an acidic condition was able to open virus particles this was a strong
indication that these honeybee viruses use the endocytosis pathway to infect cells it also
suggests that natural honey might be a layer of security against honeybee viruses infection
and artificial food given to bees without ph adjustment might be helping the viruses instead
this is another lesson on why we should be very careful when we replace natural conditions with
artificial not well thought solutions to help the honeybees apple cider vinegar in this case
might indeed be helping honey bees to kill viruses by lowering the ph of the food which
will trigger the release of the vars genome out of the capsid prematurely inactivating the virus
and in the case of sick bees being sprayed with apple cyber vinegar if the bees are infected
with some of these viruses it will be reasonable to think that it might also be killing viruses
in different surfaces like the frames itself minimizing the viruses that could potentially
be spread around by other bees maybe that's the reason why the beekeepers is seeing some
improvement in his apiary a lot of speculation here and a lot more research is needed to confirm
all of this our mission here at insider high.tv is to bring relevant information from the scientific
world to beekeepers that could potentially be translated into beneficial procedures please
keep in mind the significant amount of other variables involved before you start to think about
using apple cider vinegar on your bees we don't know if there is any potential to harm effect
so be careful are there any other potential benefits of apple cider vinegar to honeybees
I am not sure but I know there are a lot of other stories circulating out there
that I will for sure touch base on if I found relevant information to share
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