mellifera

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are exposed to multiple stressors such as pesticides, lack of forage, and diseases. It is therefore a long-standing aim to develop robust and meaningful indicators of bee vitality to assist beekeepers While established indicators often focus on expected colony winter mortality based on adult bee abundance and honey reserves at the beginning of the winter, it would be useful to have indicators that allow detection of stress effects earlier in the year to allow for adaptive management...

Tropilaelaps mercedesae, an ectoparasitic mite of honeybees, is currently a severe health risk to Apis mellifera colonies in Asia and a potential threat to the global apiculture industry. However, our understanding of the physiological and developmental regulation of this pest remains significantly insufficient. Using ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry, we provide the first comprehensive proteomic profile of T. mercedesae spanning its entire post-embryonic ontogeny, including protonymphs, deutonymphs, mature adults, and reproductive mites...

For the past 15 years, the proportion of honey bee hives that fail to survive winter has averaged ~ 30% in the United States. Winter hive loss has significant negative impacts on agriculture, the economy, and ecosystems. Compared to other factors, the role of honey bee gut microbial communities in driving winter hive loss has received little attention. We investigate the relationship between winter survival and honey bee gut microbiome composition of 168 honey bees from 23 hives, nine of which failed to survive through winter 2022...

The vitellogenin receptor (VgR) is essential for the uptake and transport of the yolk precursor, vitellogenin (Vg). Vg is synthesized in the fat body, released in the hemolymph, and absorbed in the ovaries, via receptor-mediated endocytosis. Besides its important role in the reproductive pathway, Vg occurs in nonreproductive worker honey bee, suggesting its participation in other pathways. The objective was to verify if the VgR occurs in the hypopharyngeal glands of Apis mellifera workers and how Vg is internalized by these cells...

Recent global declines in bee health have elevated the need for a more complete understanding of the cellular stress mechanisms employed by diverse bee species. We recently uncovered the biomarker lethal (2) essential for life (l(2)efl) genes as part of a shared transcriptional program in response to a number of cell stressors in the western honey bee (Apis mellifera). Here we describe another shared stress responsive gene, Glycine N-methyl transferase (Gnmt), which is known as a key metabolic switch controlling cellular methylation reactions...

Agrochemicals play a vital role in protecting crops and enhancing agricultural production by reducing threats from pests, pathogens and weeds. The toxicological status of honey bees can be influenced by a number of factors, including pesticides. While extensive research has focused on the lethal and sublethal effects of insecticides on individual bees and colonies, it is important to recognise that fungicides and herbicides can also affect bee health. Unfortunately, in the field, honey bees are exposed to mixtures of compounds rather than single substances...

Studying the toxic effects of pesticides on bees has consistently been a prominent area of interest for researchers. Nonetheless, existing research has predominantly concentrated on individual toxicity assessments, leaving a gap in our understanding of mixed toxicity. This study delves into the individual and combined toxic effects of abamectin (ABA) and lambda-cyhalothrin (LCY) on honey bees (Apis mellifera) in laboratory settings. We discovered that ABA (96 h-LC50 value of 0.079 mg/L) exhibited greater acute toxicity to honey bees compared to LCY (96 h-LC50 value of 9...

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Sepsis poses one of the biggest public health problems, necessitating the search for new therapeutic alternatives. For centuries, propolis has been widely used in folk medicine to treat various inflammatory and infectious diseases. Given its extensive use, it has excellent potential as an adjuvant treatment for patients with sepsis. OBJECTIVE: This study evaluated prophylactic treatment with standardized propolis extract (EPP-AF®) and followed the prognosis of sepsis induced by ligation and cecal ligation and puncture (CLP)...

The most common viral diseases affecting honey bees (Apis mellifera) in Israel include deformed wing viruses (DWV A and DWV-B) and acute paralysis viruses (ABPV and IAPV). These viruses are transmitted within and between colonies, both horizontally and vertically. All members of the colony contribute to this transmission, on the other hand individual and social immunity, particularly hygienic behaviour, may affect the outcome of the process. In this study, we evaluated the ontogeny of natural infections of DWV-A, DWV-B, ABPV and IAPV, their prevalence and loads, in workers and drones from high (H) and low (L) hygienic colonies...

The detection of magnetic fields by animals is known as magnetoreception. The ferromagnetic hypothesis explains magnetoreception assuming that magnetic nanoparticles are used as magnetic field transducers. Magnetite nanoparticles in the abdomen of Apis mellifera honeybees have been proposed in the literature as the magnetic field transducer. However, studies with ants and stingless bees have shown that the whole body of the insect contain magnetic material, and that the largest magnetization is in the antennae...

Rice sheath blight, caused by the fungus Rhizoctonia solani , poses a significant threat to rice cultivation globally. This study aimed to investigate the potential mechanisms of action of camphor derivatives against R. solani . Compound 4o exhibited superior fungicidal activities in vitro (EC50 = 6.16 mg/L), and in vivo curative effects (77.5%) at 500 mg/L were significantly ( P < 0.01) higher than the positive control validamycin·bacillus (66.1%). Additionally, compound 4o exhibited low cytotoxicity and acute oral toxicity for adult worker honeybees of Apis mellifera L...

Behavioural regulation in insect societies remains a fundamental question in sociobiology. In hymenopteran societies, the queen plays a crucial role in regulating group behaviour by affecting individual behaviour and physiology through modulation of worker gene expression. Honey bee (Apis mellifera) queens signal their presence via queen mandibular pheromone (QMP). While QMP has been shown to influence behaviour and gene expression of young workers, we know little about how these changes translate in older workers...

The European honey bee (Apis mellifera) is an important crop pollinator threatened by multiple stressors, including exposure to contaminants. Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) is a persistent global contaminant that accumulates and biomagnifies in food chains and is detected in honey. Even sublethal exposure to PFOS is detrimental to bee health, but exposure routes are unclear and nothing is known about bee response (detection, avoidance, or attraction) to PFOS. Using Y-mazes, we studied the response of individual bees to PFOS-spiked sugar syrup at four concentrations, 0...

Behavioral division is essential for the sustainability and reproduction of honeybee populations. While accumulating evidence has documented that antibiotic exposure interferes with bee behavioral divisions, how the gut microbiome, host physiology, and genetic regulation are implicated in this process remains understudied. Here, by constructing single-cohort colonies, we validated that the gut microbiota varied in composition between age-matched nurse and forager bees. Perturbing the gut microbiota with a low dose of antibiotic retained the gut bacterial size, but the structure of the microbial community continuously diverged from the control group after antibiotic treatment...

The survival of the honey bee (Apis mellifera), which has a crucial role in pollination and ecosystem maintenance, is threatened by many pathogens, including parasites, bacteria, fungi and viruses. The ectoparasite Varroa destructor is considered the major cause of the worldwide decline in honey bee colony health. Although several synthetic acaricides are available to control Varroa infestations, resistant mites and side effects on bees have been documented. The development of natural alternatives for mite control is therefore encouraged...

In recent years, there has been growing concern on the potential weakening of honey bees and their increased susceptibility to pathogens due to chronic exposure to xenobiotics. The present work aimed to study the effects on bees undergoing an infection by Nosema ceranae and being exposed to a frequently used in-hive acaricide, amitraz. To achieve this, newly emerged bees were individually infected with N. ceranae spores and/or received a sublethal concentration of amitraz in their diets under laboratory conditions...

Gradual pollen presentation is a plant reproductive mechanism to improve pollination efficiency and accuracy and promote outcrossing. Vaccinium corymbosum 'Bluecrop' has a typical gradual pollen presentation mechanism. 'Bluecrop' exhibits an inverted bell-shaped flower with a white coloration. By investigating the flower syndrome, pollination characteristics, pollination efficiency, and breeding system of 'Bluecrop', this study aims to explore the adaptive significance of these traits. The results showed 'Bluecrop' released pollen gradually through anther poricidal dehiscence...

In La Réunion, the established honeybee subspecies Apis mellifera unicolor, an endemic subspecies of African lineage, is facing considerable challenges. Since the introduction of the Varroa destructor mite in 2017 high colony losses have been recorded. We investigated the dynamics of V. destructor and two viruses, the Deformed Wing Virus (DWV), known to be transmitted by the mite, and the Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus (CBPV), in A. m. unicolor. Colonies from two apiaries located at 300 and 900 m a...

Microplastics (MPs) are growing and ubiquitous environmental pollutants and represent one of the greatest contemporary challenges caused by human activities. Current research has predominantly examined the singular toxicological effects of individual polymers, neglecting the prevailing reality of organisms confronted with complex contaminant mixtures and potential synergistic effects. To fill this research gap, we investigated the lethal and sublethal effects of two common MPs, polystyrene (PS - 4.8-5.8 μm) and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA - 1-40 μm), and their combination (MIX), on the pollinating insect Apis mellifera...

Nature has devised many ways of producing males and females. Here, we report on a previously undescribed mechanism for Lepidoptera that functions without a female-specific gene. The number of alleles or allele heterozygosity in a single Z-linked gene ( BaMasc ) is the primary sex-determining switch in Bicyclus anynana butterflies. Embryos carrying a single BaMasc allele develop into WZ (or Z0) females, those carrying two distinct alleles develop into ZZ males, while (ZZ) homozygotes initiate female development, have mismatched dosage compensation, and die as embryos...