The insect growth regulators (IGRs) are ecdysone or juvenile hormone mimics, or chitin synthesis inhibitors. They are more likely to be hazardous to larval insects than to adults. Application of JH mimics to adult honey bees may affect foraging behaviour and some physiological traits. Topical and feeding tests revealed that application of IGRs to larvae may result in death and larval ejection b...

BACKGROUND Honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) are the most important pollinators of many agricultural crops worldwide and are a key test species used in the tiered safety assessment of genetically engineered insect-resistant crops. There is concern that widespread planting of these transgenic crops could harm honey bee populations. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We conducted a meta-analysis of 25...

The Varroa mite has many deleterious impacts on honey bee colonies. These impacts are well known and include, for example, the weakness of honey bees by feeding on the haemolymph (Rosenkranz et al. 2010), transportation of viruses to host bees including Kashmir bee virus (Chen et al. 2004), suppresses the immunity of honey bees (Shen et al. 2005), impact bee wing Shape (Cakmak et al. 2011) and ...

The decline of pollinators worldwide is of growing concern and has been related to the use of plant-protecting chemicals. Most studies have focused on three neonicotinoid insecticides (clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam) currently subject to a moratorium in the EU. Here, we focus on thiacloprid, a widely used cyano-substituted neonicotinoid thought to be less toxic to honey bees and o...

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are uniquely vulnerable to nontarget pesticide impacts because, as ubiquitous managed pollinators, they are deliberately transported into areas where crops are grown with pesticides. Moreover, attributes making them excellent managed pollinators, including large long-lived colonies and complex behavior, also make them challenging subjects for toxicity bioassays. For ...

Giant honey bees (Apis dorsata) of southern Asia are vital honey producers and pollinators of cultivated crops and wild plants. They are known to migrate seasonally up to 200 km. It has been assumed their migrations occur stepwise, with stops for rest and foraging, but bivouacking bees have rarely been seen by scientists. Here I report discovery of a site in northern Thailand where bivouacs app...

There is an increasing global trend of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) affecting a wide range of species, including honey bees. The global epidemic of the single stranded RNA Deformed wing virus (DWV), driven by the spread of Varroa destructor has been well documented. However, DWV is just one of many insect RNA viruses which infect a wide range of hosts. Here we report the full genome sequ...

To combat an increasing abundance of sucking insect pests, >40 pesticides are currently recommended and frequently used as foliar sprays on row crops, especially cotton. Foraging honey bees may be killed when they are directly exposed to foliar sprays, or they may take contaminated pollen back to hives that maybe toxic to other adult bees and larvae. To assess acute toxicity against the honey b...

One key advantage of eusociality is shared defense of the nest, brood, and stored food; nest defense plays an important role in the biology of eusocial bees. Recent studies on honey bees, Apis mellifera, have focused on the placement of defensive activity in the overall scheme of division of labor, showing that guard bees play a unique and important role in colony defense. Alarm pheromones func...

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 total o...