the fruit set rate and yield of pear are commonly low due to insufficient pollination, as the species is unattractive to honeybees. to improve honeybee foraging behavior for the pollination of dangshan pear (pyrus bretschneideri cv. dangshansuli), nine methods were used to attract bees. a control treatment of colonies was fed with normal sugar syrup, while six other treatments were fed using su...

Toxicity effects of the neonicotinoid insecticides clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam were tested in the laboratory on different honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) genotypes belonging to the following subspecies: Apis mellifera mellifera L., Apis mellifera ligustica Spinola, and Apis mellifera carnica Pollmann. Oral and indirect contact trials were carried out on adult worker honey bees fo...

The seasonal variations in the chemical composition of Brazilian propolis, collected by two bee subspecies, Africanized Apis mellifera and European Apis mellifera ligustica, have been investigated by GC and GC-MS. The main components of the samples were phenolic compounds, especially cinnamic acid derivatives, the only exception being the autumn sample from Apis mellifera ligustica, where diter...

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...

China has the largest number of managed honey bee colonies, which produce the highest quantity of honey and royal jelly in the world; however, the presence of honey bee pathogens and parasites has never been rigorously identified in Chinese apiaries. We thus conducted a molecular survey of honey bee RNA viruses, Nosema microsporidia, protozoan parasites, and tracheal mites associated with nonna...

When vespine wasps, Vespa velutina Lepeletier (Hymenoptera: Vespidae), hawk (capture) bees at their nest entrances alerted and poised guards of Apis cerana cerana F. and Apis mellifera ligustica Spinola (Hymenoptera: Apidae) have average thoracic temperatures slightly above 24° C. Many additional worker bees of A. cerana, but not A. mellifera, are recruited to augment the guard bee cohort and b...

Predator-prey relationships between sympatric species allow the evolution of defense behaviors, such as honeybee colonies defending their nests against predatory wasps. We investigated the predator-prey relationship between the honeybee (Apis mellifera ligustica) and the European wasp (Vespula germanica) by evaluating the effectiveness of attack and defense behaviors, which have coevolved in th...