Due to its chemical properties, honey does not foster the growth of microorganisms, however it may contain a rich microbial community, including viable, stressed, and not viable microbes. In order to characterize honey microbiota focusing on the difference between products from beekeepers and large retail in the present study a culture-independent approach based on DNA metabarcoding was applied. Honey samples were collected from Local Beekeepers (LB) and Market sales (M) during four years with the aim to investigate the microbiological quality in the honey market. Extraction and amplification of DNA from honey samples showed reduced efficiency with increasing age of honey, with the loss of 50–80% of samples four years old (2014). For this reason, only samples of similar age were compared and the analysis of microbial communities focused on year 2017, for a total of 75 samples. Differences in alpha and beta-diversity were evidenced comparing microbial communities between LB and M samples. In particular, contaminant bacteria dominated the microbiota in M samples while LB samples were enriched in Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) that cannot be isolated with culture-dependent approaches.

由于蜂蜜的化学特性，它不会促进微生物的生长，但是它可能包含丰富的微生物群落，包括有活力，有压力且没有活力的微生物。为了表征集中于养蜂人产品和大型零售产品之间差异的蜂蜜微生物群，在本研究中，应用了一种基于DNA元条形码的与培养无关的方法。蜂蜜是在四年内从当地养蜂人（LB）和市场销售（M）收集的，目的是调查蜂蜜市场中的微生物质量。蜂蜜样品中DNA的提取和扩增显示，随着蜂蜜年龄的增长，效率降低，四岁的样品损失了50-80％（2014年）。为此原因，仅比较了相似年龄的样本，并且以2017年为重点进行了微生物群落分析，共有75个样本。比较LB和M样品之间的微生物群落，可以证明alpha和β多样性存在差异。特别是，污染物细菌在M样品中占主导地位，而LB样品中富含不能通过培养依赖性方法分离的乳酸菌（LAB）。