Search

Bombus atratus bumblebees from Colombia that were caught in the wild and from breeding programs were screened for a broad set of bee pathogens. We discovered for the first time Lake Sinai Virus and confirmed the infection by other common viruses. The prevalence of Apicystis bombi, Crithidia bombi and Nosema ceranae was remarkably high. According to other studies the former two could have been co-introduced in South America with exotic bumble bees as Bombus terrestris or Bombus ruderatus. Given the fact that none of these species occur in Colombia, our data puts a new light on the spread of these pathogens over the South American continent.

International audience; Modern agriculture often involves the use of pesticides to protect crops. These substances are harmful to target organisms (pests and pathogens). Nevertheless, they can also damage non-target animals, such as pollinators and entomophagous arthropods. It is obvious that the undesirable side effects of pesticides on the environment should be reduced to a minimum. Western honey bees (Apis mellifera) are very important organisms from an agricultural perspective and are vulnerable to pesticide-induced impacts. They contribute actively to the pollination of cultivated crops and wild vegetation, making food production possible. Of course, since Apis mellifera occupies the same ecological niche as many other species of pollinators, the loss of honey bees caused by environmental pollutants suggests that other insects may experience a similar outcome. Because pesticides can harm honey bees and other pollinators, it is important to register pesticides that are as selective as possible. In this manuscript, we describe a selection of methods used for studying pesticide toxicity/selectiveness towards Apis mellifera. These methods may be used in risk assessment schemes and in scientific research aimed to explain acute and chronic effects of any target compound on Apis mellifera.

Honey bees have been domesticated for centuries, and are now managed commercially to pollinate crops and produce hive products. Recently, bumblebee colonies have also been reared commercially and transported worldwide for crop pollination.Mounting evidence suggests that use of managed honey bees or commercially reared bumblebees may affect the health of local bumblebees. The increase in pollinator density and the mixing of managed and wild pollinator populations may augment parasite prevalence in wild bumblebees. Here, we screened 764bumblebees from around five greenhouses that either used commercially reared bumblebees or did not, as well as bumblebees from 10 colonies placed at two sites either close to or far from a honey bee apiary, for the parasites Apicystis bombi, Crithidia bombi, Nosema bombi, N. ceranae, N. apis and deformed wing virus. We found that two of the parasites were more prevalent in bumblebees that were close to managed honey bees or commercially reared bumblebees. Apicystis bombi and C. bombi were more prevalent around greenhouses using commercially reared bumblebees, while bumblebees from near to the honey bee apiary had an 18% greater prevalence of C. bombi compared to bumblebees far from the apiary. Whilst these results support previous reports of parasite spillover from commercial bumblebees, they also suggest that the prevalence of C. bombi may be elevated by stress or increased pollinator density, in addition potentially to direct spillover from commercial bumblebees. The use of managed bees clearly comes at a cost of increased parasites in wild bumblebees, which is not only a concern for bumblebee conservation, but also a phenomenon that is likely found in other sympatric pollinators around managed bees.

A variety of methods are used in honey bee research and differ depending on the level at which the research is conducted. On an individual level, the handling of individual honey bees, including the queen, larvae and pupae are required. There are different methods for the immobilising, killing and storing as well as determining individual weight of bees. The precise timing of developmental stages is also an important aspect of sampling individuals for experiments. In order to investigate and manipulate functional processes in honey bees, e. g. memory formation and retrieval and gene expression, microinjection is often used. A method that is used by both researchers and beekeepers is the marking of queens that serves not only to help to locate her during her life, but also enables the dating of queens. Creating multiple queen colonies allows the beekeeper to maintain spare queens, increase brood production or ask questions related to reproduction. On colony level, very useful techniques are the measurement of intra hive mortality using dead bee traps, weighing of full hives, collecting pollen and nectar, and digital monitoring of brood development via location recognition. At the population level, estimation of population density is essential to evaluate the health status and using beelines help to locate wild colonies. These methods, described in this paper, are especially valuable when investigating the effects of pesticide applications, environmental pollution and diseases on colony survival.

A Europe-Wide Experiment for Assessing the Impact of Genotype-Environment Interactions on the Vitality and Performance of Honey Bee Colonies: Experimental Design and Trait EvaluationAn international experiment to estimate the importance of genotype-environment interactions on vitality and performance of honey bees and on colony losses was run between July 2009 and March 2012. Altogether 621 bee colonies, involving 16 different genetic origins of European honey bees, were tested in 21 locations spread in 11 countries. The genetic strains belonged to the subspeciesA. m. carnica, A. m. ligustica, A. m. macedonica, A. m. mellifera, A. m. siciliana.At each location, the local strain of bees was tested together with at least two "foreign" origins, with a minimum starting number of 10 colonies per origin. The common test protocol for all the colonies took into account colony survival, bee population in spring, summer and autumn, honey production, pollen collection, swarming, gentleness, hygienic behaviour,Varroa destructorinfestation,Nosemaspp. infection and viruses. Data collection was performed according to uniform methods. No chemical treatments against Varroa or other diseases were applied during the experiment. This article describes the details of the experiment set-up and the work protocol.