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...

This study is dedicated to proposing a two-stage method, which first uses Self-Organizing Feature Maps (SOM) neural network to determine the number of clusters and cluster centroids, then uses honey bee mating optimization algorithm based on K-means algorithm to find the final solution. The results of simulated data via a Monte Carlo study show that the proposed method outperforms two other met...

BACKGROUND The stingless bee is a natural type of bee that exists in almost every continent. The honey produced by this bee has been widely used across time and space. The distinctive feature of this honey is that it is stored naturally in the pot (cerumen), thus contributing to its beneficial properties, especially in the wound healing process. METHODS In this article, several studies on sti...

One of the values of biodiversity is that it may provide 'biological insurance' for services currently rendered by domesticated species or technology. We used crop pollination as a model system, and investigated whether the loss of a domesticated pollinator (the honey bee) could be compensated for by native, wild bee species. We measured pollination provided to watermelon crops at 23 farms in N...

The ectoparasitic Varroa destructor mite is a major contributor to the ongoing honey bee health crisis. Varroa interacts with honey bee viruses, exacerbating their pathogenicity. In addition to vectoring viruses, immunosuppression of the developing honey bee hosts by Varroa has been proposed to explain the synergy between viruses and mites. However, the evidence for honey bee immune suppression...

Honey bees, Apis mellifera L., are frequently used to pollinate commercial cranberries, Vaccinium macrocarpon Ait., but information is lacking on the relative contribution of honey bees and native bees, the effects of surrounding vegetation on bee visitation, and on optimal timing for honey bee introduction. We begin with a descriptive study of numbers of honey bees, bumble bees, and other bees...

The number of managed honey bee colonies has considerably decreased in many developed countries in recent years and ectoparasitic mites are considered as major threats to honey bee colonies and health. However, their general biology remains poorly understood. We sequenced the genome of Tropilaelaps mercedesae, the prevalent ectoparasitic mite infesting honey bees in Asia, and predicted 15 190 p...

Phasor measurement units (PMUs) are important devices for protection, monitoring, and control of modern power systems. Unlike the supervisory data acquisition (SCADA) system which only measure magnitude, PMUs can provide a set synchronized phasor measurements with high sampling rate accuracy less than one second, better monitoring especially during outages. Since costly devices, operator is not...

Recent declines in managed honey bee, Apis mellifera L., colonies have increased interest in the current and potential contribution of wild bee populations to the pollination of agricultural crops. Because wild bees often live in agricultural fields, their population density and contribution to crop pollination may be influenced by farming practices, especially those used to reduce the populati...