Contribution of European forests to safeguard wild honeybee populations

Réquier, Fabrice; Paillet, Yoan; Laroche, Fabien; Rutschmann, Benjamin; Zhang, Jie; Lombardi, Fabio; Svoboda, Miroslav; Steffan‐Dewenter, Ingolf

doi:10.1111/conl.12693

Cited by 23 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Honey bees showed a less steep decrease but their overall density in the landscape depend on beekeeping activities. While large and old forest areas may contain wild honey bee colonies (Requier et al., 2019), only small, disturbed and fragmented forest patches occur in our agricultural landscapes. Thus, honey bees in our study belong to managed colonies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Crop pollination services: Complementary resource use by social vs solitary bees facing crops with contrasting flower supply

Bänsch

Tscharntke

Gabriel

et al. 2020

Journal of Applied Ecology

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While large and old forest areas may contain wild honey bee colonies (Requier et al, 2019), only small, disturbed and fragmented forest patches occur in our agricultural landscapes. Thus, honey bees in our study belong to managed colonies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crop pollination services: Complementary resource use by social vs solitary bees facing crops with contrasting flower supply

Bänsch

Tscharntke

Gabriel

et al. 2020

Journal of Applied Ecology

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“…Honeydew flow disease is a regional phenomenon, mainly noticed by beekeepers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, which can be explained by the coincidence of sufficiently cold winters, large fir-dominated forests, and beekeepers aiming to produce honeydew honey. However, wild-living honey bee colonies that are not maintained by beekeepers can be found in forests all over Europe [55] and can come in contact with melezitose, too. It can be assumed,…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

The trisaccharide melezitose impacts honey bees and their intestinal microbiota

et al. 2020

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In general, honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) feed on honey produced from collected nectar. In the absence of nectar, during certain times of the year or in monocultural landscapes, honey bees forage on honeydew. Honeydew is excreted by different herbivores of the order Hemiptera that consume phloem sap of plant species. In comparison to nectar, honeydew is composed of a higher variety of sugars and additional sugars with higher molecular weight, like the trisaccharide melezitose that can be a major constituent of honeydew. However, melezitose-containing honey is known to cause malnutrition in overwintering honey bees. Following the hypothesis that melezitose may be the cause for the so called 'honeydew flow disease', three independent feeding experiments with caged bees were conducted in consecutive years. Bees fed with melezitose showed increased food uptake, higher gut weights and elevated mortality compared to bees fed a control diet. Moreover, severe disease symptoms, such as swollen abdomen, abdomen tipping and impaired movement were observed in melezitose-fed bees. 16S-amplicon sequencing indicated that the melezitose diet changed the species composition of the lactic acid bacteria community within the gut microbiota. Based on these results, we conclude that melezitose cannot be easily digested by the host and may accumulate in the hindgut. Within cages or during winter, when there is no opportunity for excretion, the accumulated melezitose can cause severe intestinal symptoms and death of the bees, probably as result of poor melezitose metabolism capabilities in the intestinal microbiota. These findings confirm the causal relation between the trisaccharide melezitose and the honeydew flow disease and indicate a possible mechanism of pathogenesis. OPEN ACCESSCitation: Seeburger VC, D'Alvise P, Shaaban B, Schweikert K, Lohaus G, Schroeder A, et al. (2020) The trisaccharide melezitose impacts honey bees and their intestinal microbiota. PLoS ONE 15(4): e0230871. https://doi.org/10. Data Availability Statement:The 16S amplicon sequence data generated during the current study are available from Dryad using the doi: https://doi. org/10.5061/dryad.3ffbg79f8. symptoms of this food toxicosis are diverse: a high number of bees remain at the hive entrance instead of foraging, bees experience massive loss of hair (which may indicate complication with virus infections) and changes their behavioural patterns [3]. Even necrotic appearances could be shown in the midgut of honey bees when fed with honeydew honey in tent experiments [3]. This condition can deteriorate to a point where colonies collapse within short time. This is known to beekeepers and discussed in beekeeping journals [4], but the precise reason has remained unknown.Honey bees primarily forage on nectar. The three most common nectar sugars are the two monosaccharides glucose and fructose, and the disaccharide sucrose [5]. However, seasonally or locally nectar plants are lacking, and nectar is not available. In such situations honey bees tend to forage on honey...

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“…Feral colonies are thought to occur in many regions (Bargain, 2018;Kohl and Rutschmann, 2018;Oleksa et al, 2013;Requier et al, 2019), although it is unclear how long such colonies survive. When these colonies survive for more than two or three years, it is not known whether they express genetic resistance against the parasite or whether they survive solely due to favourable environmental conditions.…”

Section: Nesting Habitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three Decades of Selecting Honey Bees that Survive Infestations by the Parasitic Mite <em>Varroa destructor</em>: Outcomes, Limitations and Strategy

Guichard¹,

Dietemann²,

Neuditschko³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Despite the implementation of control strategies, the invasive parasitic mite Varroa destructor remains one of the principal causes of honey bee (Apis mellifera) colony losses in numerous countries. For this reason, the parasite represents a serious threat to beekeeping and to agro-ecosystems that benefit from the pollination services provided by honey bees. Numerous selection programmes have been initiated over the last three decades with the aim of promoting the establishment of balance in the host–parasite relationship and, thus, helping European honey bees to survive in the presence of the parasite without the need for acaricide treatments. Such programmes have focused on either selective breeding for putative resistance traits or natural selection. To date, no clear overview of these attempts has been available, which has prevented building on past successes or failures and, therefore, hindered the development of a sustainable strategy for solving the V. destructor problem. In the present study, we review past and current selection strategies, report on their outcomes and discuss their limitations. Based on this state-of-the-art knowledge, we propose a strategy for increasing response to selection and colony survival against V. destructor infestations. Developing in-depth knowledge regarding the selected traits, optimising selection programmes and communicating their outcomes are all crucial to our efforts to establish a balanced relationship between the invasive parasite and its new host.

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Contribution of European forests to safeguard wild honeybee populations

Cited by 23 publications

References 32 publications

Crop pollination services: Complementary resource use by social vs solitary bees facing crops with contrasting flower supply

Crop pollination services: Complementary resource use by social vs solitary bees facing crops with contrasting flower supply

The trisaccharide melezitose impacts honey bees and their intestinal microbiota

Three Decades of Selecting Honey Bees that Survive Infestations by the Parasitic Mite <em>Varroa destructor</em>: Outcomes, Limitations and Strategy

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