Socialized medicine: Individual and communal disease barriers in honey bees

Evidence for antiseptic behaviour towards sick adult bees in honey bee colonies

“…Several antiseptic behaviours have already been described for honey bees and insect colonies in general (Schmid-Hempel, 1998;Evans and Spivak, 2010;Hart and Ratnieks, 2001;Rosengaus et al, 1999). Hygienic behaviour (Rothenbuhler and Thompson, 1956;Spivak and Gilliam, 1998a,b) and undertaking (Visscher, 1983) are the most important behaviours which consist in detecting and removing diseased brood in the larval and pupal stages, and dragging out dead adult bees from the colony.…”

“…Like any other group of social insects, honeybee colonies, with their rich store of food, abundant mass of immature brood and adults, suffer attack from numerous pathogens and parasites (Otvos, 2000;Evans and Spivak, 2010). Moreover, the constant and relatively high temperature and humidity levels maintained in a bee nest provide the perfect environment for the incubation of all kinds of microorganisms, such as protozoa, fungi, bacteria and viruses.…”

“…It is well documented that many of these behaviours are commonly triggered by chemical cues. In particular, the cuticular hydrocarbons, known to play a key role in chemical communication in all social insects, mediate hygienic and undertaking behaviours in honeybees (see Evans and Spivak, 2010). Evidence exists that cuticular hydrocarbon profiles can be altered simply by activation of the immune system of bees, by using bacterial lipopolysaccharide injections (Richard et al, 2008).…”

Fungal disease dynamics in insect societies: Optimal killing rates and the ambivalent effect of high social interaction rates

“…First, social immunity is an effective mechanism to prevent disease outbreaks in host societies. This is not surprising given the sophisticated collective behaviours described in empirical studies of social insects (reviewed by Cremer et al (2007); Evans and Spivak (2010); Wilson-Rich et al (2009)). However, social immunity is contained in our parameter ζ, which also includes individual immunity and the dilution of pathogens due to physical contact between individuals.…”

“…To counteract this risk, social insects have developed a variety of collective disease defence mechanisms, their social immunity (Cremer et al, 2007;Evans and Spivak, 2010;WilsonRich et al, 2009), which complement the individual immunity of each group member. One of the most important sanitary behaviours expressed against entomopathogenic fungi is grooming, during which the insects remove infectious particles from the body surface of either themselves (self-grooming) or their nestmates (allogrooming) (Hughes et al, 2002;Rosengaus et al, 1999) and even chemically disinfect them .…”