Bee pollen and bee bread have always been regarded as excellent natural resources for application in food and pharmaceutical fields due to their rich nutrient content and diversity of bioactive compounds with health-improving properties. Extensive studies on both bee products as ingredients for a healthy diet were reported, although the data concerning their metabolization on the gastrointestinal tract is quite limited. Here, we report, at each digestive stage, the bioactive profile for both bee products, their bioaccessibility levels and the antioxidant activity evaluation. The findings indicated that the average bioaccessibility level of total phenolic and total flavonoid content for bee pollen was 31% and 25%, respectively, while it was 38% and 35% for bee bread. This was reflected in a decrease of their antioxidant capacity at the end of in vitro gastrointestinal digestion, both in free radicals scavenging capacity and in reducing power. Moreover, within the 35 phytochemicals identified, the most affected by gastrointestinal digestion were phenylamides, with a complete digestibility at the end of the intestinal phase. Overall, our results highlight that bioactive compounds in both raw products do not reflect the real amount absorbed in the intestine, being bee bread more accessible in bioactive content than bee pollen.

The drastic and abrupt loss of honey bee colonies around the world has long unsettled the beekeeping community, and although the phenomenon is far from being solved, there is a relative consensus regarding the detrimental effect the mite Varroa destructor exerts over Apis mellifera populations. In Portugal, this parasite was first recorded in the late 1980s and since then, the beekeepers’ method of choice for controlling the mite are synthetic acaricides, most notably the pyrethroids tau-fluvalinate and flumethrin. Unsurprisingly, resistance to these active ingredients quickly surfaced. Here, we report the first PCR-RFLP resistance assessment in Portuguese apiaries, where 96 V. destructor mites, from different geographic regions, were genotyped between April and August of 2019. The results showed that 47% of the sampled mites exhibit the mutation correlated with resistance. These findings stress the need for a current characterization of the acaricides being used and a description of how the treatments are been applied.

Esta revisão de literatura apresenta uma referência atual sobre o comportamento higiênico (CH) em abelhas melíferas. Justifica a importância da abelha pelos seus produtos e serviços. Discorre sobre os desafios ambientais, genéticos e sanitários, com destaque para as pragas e doenças minimizadas pelo CH. Descreve os principais mecanismos de defesa das abelhas, com ênfase no CH. Além disso, na seleção para CH, apresenta informações sobre o teste de comportamento higiênico, a coleta e contagem do ácaro Varroa destructor na colônia, o cálculo do percentual de infestação da colônia e os recentes trabalhos de seleção genómica.