By CHRISTIE MASTRIC

Journal Staff Writer

MARQUETTE — Is honey always harmless? That’s what some inquiring Northern Michigan University minds want to know.

Maris Cinelli, an assistant professor of chemistry at NMU, and Dominick Dotson, a junior majoring in medicinal plant chemistry, are two of those individuals who are intrigued with the connection between bees, pollen and honey in certain plants.

Dotson said an apiary was started in May near the campus Public Safety building with “nucs,” which or short for nucleus. The nucs are frames of bees.

“We set up this apiary to study the effects of medicinal plants, or other plants, or bees,” Cinelli said.

Once hives were established and adjusted to the area, effects of medicinal plants were tested on them, Dotson said. That was accomplished by enclosing them in a tent, after which the bees were allowed to pollinate specific flowers of the researchers’ choosing this past summer.

The data, he said, still is being analyzed.

“One thing we’re really interested in in this program is kind of how plant chemistry can affect people, and then bees,” Cinelli said.

Dotson came to her, as part of a class project, about whether plant chemicals can transfer into honey.

In Nepal, for example, bees set up their hives on cliff faces, and those bees pollinate a species of rhododendron that contains grayanotoxin, he said.

“When that honey is ingested, it causes a delirium effect on people, and they use it to get high,” Dotson said.

This effect inspired the NMU researchers, Cinelli said. It also helped that they received a $1,200 grant from the Michigan Botanical Foundation.

Her lab studies the chemistry of nightshades, whose flowers, she noted, contain tropane alkaloids. These alkaloids are used medicinally, but in high concentrations, they are “super toxic.”

“There’s been some circumstantial evidence that alkaloids can transfer into honey,” said Cinelli, who pointed out that no one has tried to quantify the evidence or perform the particular analytical chemistry.

So, the two put the bees in the tents with various plant mixtures, such as only an ornamental nightshade not native to Michigan — Datura metel — or a mixture of this nightshade with one native plant and one naturalized plant.

Nectar in the nightshade pollen is “just loaded” with tropane alkaloids, Cinelli said.

The other plants used with the nightshade were native yarrow and catmint, the latter of which is naturalized to the United States and is considered non-toxic, she said.

“We quantified this by looking at foraging events,” Cinelli said. “We literally sat in front of the tent and counted bee butts — a bee landing on a flower, going into a flower and actively doing bee stuff.”

She said the bees favored the catnip over the Datura by a ratio of about 2 to 1, and the Datura over the yarrow by a ratio of about 5 to 1.

One of the things they were concerned about was the alkaloids, Cinelli said. There’s a higher risk of ending up with alkaloids in honey when bees prefer Datura, she said, but in an open system, there will be plants, such as catmint, that the bees will prefer over Datura. So, there is a lower risk of alkaloids getting into honey.

Dotson said bee behavior also was monitored.

“We were looking for any signs of disorientation or any irregular behavior,” he said. “They can get diarrhea, which would be a different color than normal.”

No illnesses were seen.

“The only thing we saw was the impact of having the bees in a confined system, but that was in our control group,” Cinelli said.

Their work is not finished.

“We are testing the honey for the presence of tropane alkaloids, and we’re doing that using liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectroscopy,” Dotson said. “We’ve recently been working on establishing methods on how to go about that.”

Finding tropane alkaloids in honey could be problematic.

“That’s much more of a concern if bees are favoring the Datura over the native catmint, because if an open system, you’d have Datura, you’d have catmint, you’d have a hundred other plants,” Cinelli said, “and if the Datura could outcompete, that’s what the bees are going to zoom in on. Then it’s like, ‘Should we be planting this anywhere near our garden?'”

Datura, she noted, can be purchased in nurseries — and if humans consume containing tropane alkaloids, it’s toxic to them in large quantities.

“We don’t know what our bees are flying off and foraging on,” Cinelli said.

Not only could people plant ornamental flowers and poison themselves, bees could be affected as well, she said, and wild Datura relatives that grow in the area, such as jimsonweed, also contain alkaloids.

“Not all flowering plants make chemicals that are good for bees,” Cinelli said. “In high concentrations, they can deter feeding or they can even poison bees.”

One solution to the possible Datura problem, she noted, is to not plant Datura near a beehive, or if it’s nearby, pull out a wild relative.

Cinelli wants to see the apiary expanded for more research on plants and bees.

Alkaloid concentrations make up one possible topic.

“Is it above a level that could affect a human, or is it just a trace contaminant?” Cinelli asked.

Dotson stressed that worldwide, the number of bee hives are decreasing, although he’s pleased to know of two hives near NMU.

“Anything we can do to boost them up or help them out is really nice,” he said.

Christie Mastric can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.