Two microsporidians are known to infect honey bees: Nosema apis and Nosema ceranae. Whereas population genetics data for the latter have been released in the last few years, such information is still missing for N. apis. Here we analyze the patterns of nucleotide polymorphism at three single-copy loci (PTP2, PTP3 and RPB1) in a collection of Apis mellifera isolates from all over the world, natu...

nosema apis is an obligate intracellular parasite belonging to phylum microsporidia. this para site is known as main causative agent of nosemosis in honeybees especially in the european honeybee (apis mellifera). nosemosis can cause queen supersedure, reduction of honey yield and dwindling the population of honeybees. a total number of 54 apiaries were randomly sampled from april to july 2011 a...

The native range of the honeybee Apis mellifera encompasses Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, whereas the nine other species of Apis are found exclusively in Asia. It is therefore commonly assumed that A. mellifera arose in Asia and expanded into Europe and Africa. However, other hypotheses for the origin of A. mellifera have also been proposed based on phylogenetic trees constructed from ge...

Neotropical African honeybees (Apis mellifera scutellata), in the process of spreading throughout tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas, hybridize with and mostly replace European honeybees (primarily Apis mellifera mellifera and Apis mellifera ligustica). To help understand this process, we studied the effect of lineage (African, European, or hybrid) on the flight physiology of hone...

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The African honey bee subspecies Apis mellifera scutellata has colonized much of the Americas in less than 50 years and has largely replaced European bees throughout its range in the New World. The African bee therefore provides an excellent opportunity to examine the factors that influence invasion success. We provide a synthesis of recent research on the African bee, concentrating on its abil...

We developed a computational pipeline for homology based identification of the complete repertoire of olfactory receptor (OR) genes in the Asian honey bee species, Apis florea Apis florea is phylogenetically the most basal honey bee species and also the most distant sister species to the Western honey bee Apis mellifera, for which all OR genes had been identified before. Using our pipeline, we ...

Queens of the honey bee, Apis mellifera (L.), exhibit extreme polyandry, mating with up to 45 different males (drones). This increases the genetic diversity of their colonies, and consequently their fitness. After copulation, drones leave a mating sign in the genital opening of the queen which has been shown to promote additional mating of the queen. On one hand, this signing behavior is benefi...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0179922.].

Since its recent introduction into Europe, the yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina, has become a major predator of the domestic honeybee, Apis mellifera, but little is known about its hunting behavior. We studied V. velutina hunting behavior by a capture-mark-recapture procedure in an experimental apiary. A total of 360 hornets were captured and tagged, and we determined: (i) the number of hor...