Effect of kelulut honey on gram positive bacteria

Honey is one of remedies that have been used for centuries as cough and sore throat reliever. But it also can be used to heal infected surgical wounds, burns and decubitus ulcer, and as antioxidant. In this study, Kelulut honey produced by Heterotrigona itama sp. and Geniotrigona thoracica sp. and Tualang honey produced by Apis dorsata sp. were be tested with Gram-positive bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis and Micrococcus luteus as antimicrobial agent. There is five different concentration of both honey were used (5, 10, 25, 50 and 75% v/v). The antimicrobial test was conducted using the disk diffusion method. As results, Kelulut honey has been proven to have more profound effect as antimicrobial agent compared to Tualang honey due to the presence of hydrogen peroxide, acidity and osmolarity of the Kelulut honey. Kelulut honey showed inhibition to all three Gram-positive bacteria and showed the most effective on inhibit Mluteus growth with 8.0 mm diameter zone of inhibition. In contrast, Tualang honey can only showed inhibition to two Gram-positive bacteria (S. aureus and B. subtilis). The biggest diameter of zone of inhibition that Tualang honey can produce was 7.5 mm. The statistical analysis that has been carried out was one sample t-test showed that the value of two-tail significance for both Kelulut and Tualang honey is less than 0.05 indicates that the difference between means was significance (p<0.05).