BACKGROUND The honey bee, Apis mellifera, is frequently used as a sentinel to monitor environmental pollution. In parallel, general weakening and unprecedented colony losses have been reported in Europe and the USA, and many factors are suspected to play a central role in these problems, including infection by pathogens, nutritional stress and pesticide poisoning. Honey bee, honey and pollen sa...

  Among the viruses infecting honey bees, chronic bee paralysis virus (CBPV) is known to induce significant losses in honey bee colonies. CBPV is an unclassified polymorphic single stranded RNA virus. Using RT-PCR, the virus infections in honey bees can be detected in a rapid and accurate manner. Bee samples were collected from 23 provinces of Iran, between July-September 2011 and 2012. A tota...

Propolis is a substance derived from antimicrobial plant resins that honey bees use in the construction of their nests. Propolis use in the hive is an important component of honey bee social immunity and confers a number of positive physiological benefits to bees. The benefits that bees derive from resins are mostly due to their antimicrobial properties, but it is unknown how the diversity of a...

The occurrence, prevalence, and distribution patterns of acute bee paralysis virus (ABPV), black queen cell virus (BQCV), chronic bee paralysis virus (CBPV), deformed wing virus (DWV), Kashmir bee virus (KBV), and sacbrood virus (SBV) were investigated in 90 Austrian honeybee colonies suffering from symptoms of depopulation, sudden collapse, paralysis, or dark coloring by employing reverse tran...

Varroa destructor is one of the most common parasites of honey bee colonies and is considered as a possible co-factor for honey bee decline. At the same time, the use of pesticides in intensive agriculture is still the most effective method of pest control. There is limited information about the effects of pesticide exposure on parasitized honey bees. Larval ingestion of certain pesticides coul...

Shimanuki, Hachiro, and David A. Knox. 2000. Diagnosis of Honey Bee Diseases. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Handbook No. AH– 690, 61 pp. Apiary inspectors and beekeepers must be able to recognize bee diseases and parasites and to differentiate the serious diseases from the less important ones. This handbook describes laboratory techniques used to diagnose diseases and other abnorm...

Since the sequencing of the honey bee genome, proteomics by mass spectrometry has become increasingly popular for biological analyses of this insect; but we have observed that the number of honey bee protein identifications is consistently low compared to other organisms [1]. In this dataset, we use nanoelectrospray ionization-coupled liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (nLC-MS/MS) t...

A Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) molecular diagnostic survey for the honey bee pathogens Nosema apis Zander and N. ceranae Fries was conducted on feral Africanized honey bee (AHB) and European honey bee (EHB), Apis mellifera L., populations sampled from Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, Utah, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. Polymerase Chain Reaction – Restriction Fragment Length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) ...

Nosema ceranae is a widely prevalent microsporidian parasite in the western honey bee. There is considerable uncertainty regarding infection dynamics of this important pathogen in honey bee colonies. Understanding the infection dynamics at the colony level may aid in development of a reliable sampling protocol for N. ceranae diagnosis, and provide insights into efficient treatment strategies. T...

Palynological spectrum, proximate and fatty acid (FA) composition of eight bee bread samples of different botanical origins were examined and significant variations were observed. The samples were all identified as monofloral, namely Castanea sativa (94.4%), Trifolium spp. (85.6%), Gossypium hirsutum (66.2%), Citrus spp. (61.4%) and Helianthus annuus (45.4%). Each had moisture content between 1...