A Europe-Wide Experiment for Assessing the Impact of Genotype-Environment Interactions on the Vitality and Performance of Honey Bee Colonies: Experimental Design and Trait Evaluation

Abstract

M a r c o L o d e s a n i 1 , M a r i n a Meixner 2 , B e a t a P a n a s i u k 4 , H e r m a n n P e c h h a c k e r 1 7 * , P l a m e n P e t r o v 1 8 * , E u g e n i a O l i v e r i 1 9 , L a u r i R u o t t i n e n 1 5 , A l e k s a n d a r U z u n o v 1 3 * , . m. carnica, A. m. ligustica, A. m. macedonica, A. m. mellifera, A. m. siciliana. At each location, the local strain of bees was tested together with at least two "foreign" origins, with a minimum starting number of 10 colonies per origin. The common test protocol for all the colonies took into account colony survival, bee population in spring, summer and autumn, honey production, pollen collection, swarming, gentleness, hygienic behaviour, Varroa destructor infestation, Nosema spp. infection and viruses. Data collection was performed according to uniform methods. No chemical treatments against Varroa or other diseases were applied during the experiment. This article describes the details of the experiment set-up and the work protocol. G i a c o m o V a c c a r i

Island population of European honey bees in Northeastern Brazil that have survived Varroa infestations for over 30 years

“…Meixner et al (2015) reviewed some studies concerning Varroa -resistant populations of EHBs. Their compilation highlights that colonies descending from a specific survivor population, when tested outside their native environment, often succumb to Varroa infestation, reinforcing the conception that resistance traits are strongly influenced by genotype-environment interactions (Costa et al 2012;Büchler et al 2014;Meixner et al 2014Meixner et al , 2015. It is plausible to suppose that the European bees on Fernando de Noronha are now only able to survive Varroahaplotype J infestation under the tropical weather conditions found on the island.…”

Long term effects of a food supplement HiveAlive™ on honey bee colony strength and Nosema ceranae spore counts

“…The evaluation of colony strength was performed according to the standardized "Liebefeld" method as follows: the adult bee population was evaluated by visually assessing the percentage of the comb surfaces densely covered by bees. Each percentage value was then quantified into an actual bee population based on the fact that each side of the Langstroth frame has 8.8 × 10 cm 2 surface area and that each 10 cm 2 contains approximately 130 bees (see Costa et al, 2012;Delaplane, van der Steen, & Guzman, 2013). Colonies that did not survive the winter or were too weak to be maintained were given a 0 value.…”

Subjective evaluation of defensive behavior in the Syrian honeybee (Apis mellifera syriaca)

“…The development of the scoring system used, proposed by Ruttner (1972), was strongly influenced by the behavior of A. m. carnica, one of the most gentle bee subspecies. These Apimondia International Honeybee Breeding Recommendations are still widely used (Costa et al, 2012) and efficient for the comparison of different subspecies, but their rough scale may not sufficiently discriminate differences in defensive behavior between colonies of A. m. syriaca. The estimates of the variance components show that most of the total variance is the result of the variation within colonies and consequently environmentally caused.…”