Differential Bacterial Community of Bee Bread and Bee Pollen Revealed by 16s rRNA High-Throughput Sequencing

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Gut symbionts play a crucial role in the nutrition provisioning of honeybees. However, the data on the bacterial communities of pollen collected by bees and bee bread are comparatively scarce. Therefore, the present study was designed to explore and identify the bacterial communities from them. The study reports that the bacterial diversity was significantly higher in the bee bread than in bee pollen. The higher bacterial diversity in the bee bread could presumably be due to factors such as storage period, processing of food, fermentation, and high sugar environment. The bacterial communities of bee bread possibly exhibit beneficial roles for honeybees such as polysaccharide degradation and nitrogen fixing. ABSTRACT: We investigated the bacterial community of bee bread and bee pollen samples using an approach through 16 s rRNA high-throughput sequencing. The results revealed a higher bacterial diversity in bee bread than in bee pollen as depicted in taxonomic profiling, as well as diversity indices such as the Shannon diversity index (3.7 to 4.8 for bee bread and 1.1 to 1.7 for bee pollen samples) and Simpson’s index (>0.9 for bee bread and 0.4–0.5 for bee pollen). Principal component analysis showed a distinct difference in bacterial communities. The higher bacterial diversity in the bee bread than bee pollen could presumably be due to factors such as storage period, processing of food, fermentation, and high sugar environment. However, no effect of the feed (rapeseed or oak pollen patties or even natural inflow) was indicated on the bacterial composition of bee bread, presumably because of the lack of restriction of foraged pollen inflow in the hive. The diverse bacterial profile of the bee bread could contribute to the nutritional provisioning as well as enhance the detoxification process; however, a thorough investigation of the functional role of individual bacteria genera remains a task for future studies.