Bees are major fans of hemp and a recent study has found that the taller the hemp plants are the larger the number of bees that will flock to it.
The new research, spearheaded by researchers at Cornell University and published last month in Environmental Entomology, shows that humans aren’t the only fans of weed. The findings also reinforce a study published last year at Colorado State University that discovered the same thing.
The study shows how bees are highly attracted to cannabis due to the plant’s plentiful stores of pollen, and it could pave the way for scientists to figure out new ways to support their struggling population as well as floral populations.
According to the study, the greater the area covered by the hemp plant the greater the chance that bees will swarm to the area. Additionally, those hemp plants that are taller have a much greater likelihood of attracting bees with the tallest plants attracting a stunning 17 times more bees than the shortest plants.
The study also found that as time went on greater amounts of bees visited the hemp plots on a more frequent basis. It sounds almost like the word-of-mouth effect among humans who hear about great deals at a dispensary, no?
The researchers also discovered that hemp, a major cash crop with multiple applications, can support no less than 16 different varieties of bees in the northeastern United States.
The findings may seem strange considering that cannabis doesn’t produce the sweet, sugary nectar that your typical floral varieties produce to attract insects. Nor does hemp flower come in the dazzling array of bright colors that likewise attract bugs. However, the pollen produced by male flowers is highly attractive to the 16 bee subspecies in the study for reasons that remain unknown.
Female flowers—the kind that humans like to smoke for its intoxicating and soothing effects—are basically ignored by bees since they don’t produce any acutal flowers.
The study’s author’s wrote:
What makes the findings so compelling is the crucial impact it could have on suffering bee populations across the United States.
Bee are perhaps one of the most important managed pollinators in U.S. agriculture. Spreading the male sex cells of flowers to their female counterparts in a natural process that is highly crucial to plant reproduction.
According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, pollinators are worth anywhere from $235 and $577 billion worldwide owing to their pivotal role in the production of global crops. In the U.S. alone this means that bees are responsible for $20 billion of domestic crop production. Without bees we can kiss almonds, blueberries, watermelon, and other crops goodbye.
The authors of the study made clear that the combination of bees plus hemp won’t mean that folks should worry about cannabinoid-rich pollen sneaking it into their diets nor will the bees start producing honey enriched with tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—as nice as that sounds.
Likewise, the presence of cannabinoids like THC in hemp pollen is “not likely to have an impact on bee development due to the loss of cannabinoid receptors in insects.”
So while we often like to focus on the recreational or medicinal use of marijuana—in its edible, smokeable, and vape-able forms—this new research shows that the plant can in fact help nature and agriculture in amazingly important ways.
‘There is a massive movement in the world right now which is truly transforming our entire species,’ Alki David said.
Mr David described our time as a ‘golden age’ which would only get better.
‘In Australia there is a huge movement … there are movements of plant medicine lifestyle,’ he said. ‘My intention is to bring plant-medicine wellness to Australia as best as I can … Cannabanoids are part of the arsenal of medicine that is revolutionising our species.’
Mr David has a long list of celebrity endorsers, including Mike Tyson, Scott Disick of Keeping up with the Kardashians, guitarist Dave Navarro of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, hip-hop artists Snoop Dogg, Chief Keef, and Lil Wayne, as well as cannabis legend Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong.
‘I can show you 100 major, global clinical trials that prove cannabis kills most cancerous cells,’ he said.
A newly discovered cannabis compound has been shown in the lab to potentially be 30 times more potent than THC, the most studied psychoactive compound in marijuana.
Whether the new cannabinoid, named tetrahydrocannabiphorol, or THCP, will deliver 30 times the high of THC — or any high at all — is unclear.
Italian scientists also discovered a second previously unknown compound they named CBDP. It appears to be a cousin of CBD, the medicinal compound known for its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and anticonvulsant activity.
The discoveries were recently published in the journal Nature, Scientific Reports.
Discovering the compounds
The compounds were isolated and identified from the Italian medical cannabis variety known as FM2 using mass spectrometry and metabolomics, processes used to find the basic chemicals of a sample or molecule.
The authors assessed the ability of THCP to bind to human cannabinoid receptors found in the endocannabinoid systemby sending the compound to a lab to be tested in a tube.
The endocannabinoid system’s job is to keep our body in homeostasis, or equilibrium, and it regulates everything from sleep to appetite to inflammation to pain and more. When a person smokes marijuana, THC overwhelms the endocannabinoid system, latching on to cannabinoid receptors and interfering with their ability to communicate between neurons.
THCP bound strongly to both receptors — 33 times more than THC does, and 63 times more than another compound called THCV. The finding led the authors to wonder if THCP might explain whysome particularly potent cannabis varieties have a stronger effect than can be explained by the presence of THC alone.
“This means that these compounds have higher affinity for the receptors in the human body,” said Dr. Cinzia Citti, lead author of the research and post-doctoral fellow in life sciences at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy. “In cannabis varieties where THC is present in very low concentrations, then we can think that the presence of another, more active cannabinoid can explain those effects.”
The role of alkyl side chains
The alkyl side chain is the driving force behind a cannabinoid’s effects on humans. For most of the nearly 150 cannabis compounds, including THC, the chain is only five atoms long, the authors said.
However, THCP has a seven-atom chain, meaning that in its natural form it has surpassed the potency of THC.
A cannabinoid with more than five atoms has never been previously reported as naturally occurring, according to the authors. Additionally, most of them have neither been isolated nor characterized because of how challenging it is.
“The challenge is that it can take a long time to isolate, especially with rare sources,” said Dr. Jane Ishmael, associate professor in Oregon State University’s College of Pharmacy. “I get the impression that these products were present in small amounts, so it’s a surprise to find the natural products from a cannabis plant that we’ve known about for a long time.”
Potential effects in humans
CBD has mostly been the focus of studies on the health benefits of cannabis, but because THCP appears to show stronger binding abilities and potency, the authors think there is potential for health benefits.
The findings could enable the production of cannabis extracts for targeted physical effects; more testing with the study’s methods could further the discovery and identification of new compounds, the authors said.
“There are other minor cannabinoids and traces in the plant that can be hard to study, but by isolation we can continue to assess the effects they might offer,” Ishmael said.
“Historically, many of our medicines have been derived by or inspired by natural products. By having new compounds that bind with very high affinity, that will give scientists a new probe into biological sciences.”
This story first appeared at CNN. CNN’s Sandee LaMotte contributed to this report.
So far only about 2113 comments have been submitted! It is critical that the Department receive as many unique and substantive comments as possible.
PUBLIC COMMENTS MATTER! Even though the interim rule has already been made effective, USDA must still finalize it before it becomes permanent, and they are required to take into account—and respond to—all substantive comments submitted by the public.
Comments need not be lengthy, or beautifully written. But in order to be taken into account, they must be substantive, unique (no form letters), and clearly state how the rule directly impacts the commenter’s personal and/or business interests.
These are the key points a comment should cover: Identify a specific issue, topic or provision in the rule, state how it impacts you directly, and suggest an alternative that would better serve or protect your interests.
Identify credentials and experience that support your position. If you are commenting in an area in which you have relevant personal or professional experience (i.e., scientist, attorney, farmer, distributor, retailer, etc.), say so. Support your position with specific examples from your personal experience: how does the rule impact you or your business? What specific costs, burdens or missed opportunities result?
It certainly helps if you also have concrete information about the rule’s impacts to others in your community or field of business, but with a day left to submit it’s fine to skip the research paper and simply write from your own experience. That is ultimately the most powerful story to tell.
Please feel free to use this cheat sheet to build your comments!
Mice cured of MRSA, raising hopes of treating antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
A compound made by cannabis plants has been found to wipe out drug-resistant bacteria, raising hopes of a new weapon in the fight against superbugs.
Scientists screened five cannabis compounds for their antibiotic properties and found that one, cannabigerol (CBG), was particularly potent at killing methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), one of the most common hospital superbugs.
Tests in the lab showed that CBG, which is not psychoactive, killed common MRSA microbes and “persister” cells that are especially resistant to antibiotics and that often drive repeat infections. The compound also cleared up hard-to-shift “biofilms” of MRSA that can form on the skin and on medical implants.
Having seen how effective the substance was against bacteria in the lab, the researchers decided to test CBG’s ability to treat infections in animals. In a study that has not yet been published, they found that CBG cured mice of MRSA infections as effectively as vancomycin, a drug widely considered to be the last line of defence against drug-resistant microbes. The study is under review at the ACS Infectious Diseases journal.
Eric Brown, a microbiologist who led the work at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, said cannabinoids were “clearly great drug-like compounds”, but noted it was early days in assessing the compounds for use in the clinic. “There is much work to do to explore the potential of the cannabinoids as antibiotics from the safety standpoint,” he said.
Antibiotic resistance has become a major threat to public health. England’s former chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies has said the loss of effective antibiotics would lead to “apocalyptic scenarios”, with patients dying from routine infections and many operations becoming too risky to perform.
In the study, the researchers describe how the rapid global spread of drug resistance, caused by microbes developing mutations that protect them against antibiotics, has driven an urgent need to explore new sources of drugs. Among antibiotics in use today, the newest date back to discoveries made more than 30 years ago.
Bacteria fall into two classes depending on the makeup of their cells. MRSA bugs are known as gram positive bacteria, and have a single, thick cell membrane. Gram negative bugs differ in having inner and outer cell membranes, and these infections can be harder to treat. In the World Health Organization’s priority list of drug-resistant bacteria, all three ranked as a “critical” priority are gram negative, namely Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacteriaceae.
Brown found that CBG and other cannabinoids did not work well against gram negative multi-drug resistant bugs. But the team went on to show that when CBG was used with small quantities of polymyxin B, an existing antibiotic that disrupts the outer membrane of gram negative bacteria, the cannabis compound wiped out the drug-resistant pathogens.
Cannabis plants are thought to make the compounds to fight off invading pathogens, but there are other ways to produce CBG. To study the compound, Brown’s team synthesised it in the lab using the chemicals olivetol and geraniol. “We are now pursuing the required paperwork to work with a wide variety of cannabinoids,” he said.
Mark Blaskovich, who studies antibiotic cannabis compounds at the University of Queensland, said cannabis seemed to be particularly rich in antibiotics, though other plants such as tea tree, garlic and the spices turmeric and curcurmin also contained antibacterials.
“These are likely made as a defence mechanism to protect the plant from bacterial and fungal infections, but to date have not been very useful for human infections as they really only work outside the body,” he said. “That’s what makes this new report potentially exciting – evidence that cannabigerol is able to treat a systemic infection in mice.”
