INTRODUCTION

Honey is a yellowish-brown sticky sweet food made by bees from the nectar of flowers. Honey gets its sweetness from the sugars fructose and glucose. However, there are many kinds of bacteria and mycotoxins that infect honey bees from moulds that infect flowers and to prevent this or even pesticides from flowers, beekeepers use different types of antibiotics to cure the diseases. The antibiotics are also used to promote growth and increase honey production to meet commercial targets. These antibiotics have acute and chronic toxic effects on human health and also reduce the efficacy and quality of honey. The half life of these antibiotic residues are relatively long and can cause toxin infections in the consumers.

 

Antibiotics

Antibiotics are used to treat infections caused by bacteria. The antibiotics focused on in this experiment are penicillin G, streptomycin, tetracycline and gentamycin. The forms of these antibiotics used to prevent bacterial infection in bees are different than the ones humans are given as they have  arsenic compounds. High amounts of these compounds are dangerous and poisonous to our bodies and can make us resistant to certain antibiotics, therefore our bodies will be unable to fight off future bacterial infections. It can also cause damage to the blood, kidneys, liver, bones and teeth.

The aim of this research paper is to detect if there is any antibiotic residue present in the honey sample and if there is, quantify the amount present in the positive honey samples.