Bee products fight tumors in mice, study shows

Honeybees could be keeping a cornucopia of anti-cancer compounds in their hives, early research in mice suggests.

Researchers in Croatia found that bee products ranging from sting venom to sweet honey were able to prevent tumors in mice from growing and spreading, and in some cases even shrunk the tumors.

It's too soon to tell whether taking honey with your tea can reduce the risk of cancer, but the study authors say their findings suggest that adding honey or other bee products to traditional chemotherapy could have benefits.

The findings were published online recently by the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.

A number of studies have pointed up the cancer-fighting potential of honeybee products. Honey itself has been shown to boost blood levels of antioxidants; these nutrients help neutralize oxygen free radicals, byproducts of normal metabolism that can damage body cells and are thought to contribute to cancer, heart disease and other ills.

But other, less famous bee products have also been studied for their health effects. Like honey, propolis - a gummy substance that bees collect from plants in order to repair holes in their hives - contains antioxidant compounds, and animal research has suggested it has anti-tumor properties.

Royal jelly, which worker bees secrete as food for bee larvae, contains a mix of vitamins, minerals, proteins and fatty acids, and has also been shown in some mouse studies to fight tumors. Even bee venom is suspected of having a good side: some findings suggest that a venom component called melittin may keep cancer cells from growing.

For the current study, researchers led by Nada Orsolic of the University of Zagreb tested the effects of isolated honey, propolis, royal jelly, bee venom and caffeic acid - an antioxidant found in propolis - on tumor cells implanted in mice.

They found that to varying degrees, all of the compounds had some anti-tumor effects, depending on the route and timing of the dose.

For example, propolis and caffeic acid, both given orally, appeared to slow tumor progression, while oral honey impeded tumors from spreading to other sites in the animals' bodies - but only when given before the tumor cells were implanted.

For its part, bee venom was able to shrink tumors when it was injected directly into them. Three of the seven animals given bee venom showed a complete remission, according to Orsolic's team.

"This is a preliminary study and much more work needs to be done," Orsolic told Reuters Health.

The researchers now plan to study the effects of using honey and propolis alone and in combination with cancer drugs on cancer cells in the lab. One goal is to see whether the bee products might help overcome multi-drug resistance in tumor cells, Orsolic said.