Varroa destructor: A Complex Parasite, Crippling Honey Bees Worldwide

Traynor, Kirsten S.; Mondet, Fanny; Miranda, Joachim R. de; Techer, Maéva Angélique; Kowallik, Vienna; Oddie, Melissa; Chantawannakul, Panuwan; McAfee, Alison

doi:10.1016/j.pt.2020.04.004

Cited by 253 publications

(277 citation statements)

References 97 publications

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“…Consequently, episodes of robbing or infestation by Galleria mellonella larvae may occur. In addition, recent studies suggest that this measure may favor the most virulent strains of Varroa destructor [69].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Contextually, in a colony lacking an operculated brood, 100% of mites will be susceptible to treatment, thus Amitraz's effectiveness will be high, and consequently, the likelihood of resistance will be reduced. Many factors can promote the inefficiency of the treatment, for instance, the application at undue times, inadequate doses, lack of rotation of substances, among others, but also, climatic conditions, beekeeping practices or even the environmental conditions within the hives [69].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Regulation of Microclimatic Conditions inside Native Beehives and Its Relationship with Climate in Southern Spain

et al. 2020

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In this study, the Wbee Sensor System was used to record data from 10 Iberian beehives for two years in southern Spain. These data were used to identify potential conditioning climatic factors of the internal regulatory behavior of the hive and its weight. Categorical principal components analysis (CATPCA) was used to determine the minimum number of those factors able to capture the maximum percentage of variability in the data recorded. Then, categorical regression (CATREG) was used to select the factors that were linearly related to hive internal humidity, temperature and weight to issue predictive regression equations in Iberian bees. Average relative humidity values of 51.7% ± 10.4 and 54.2% ± 11.7 were reported for humidity in the brood nest and in the food area, while average temperatures were 34.3 °C ± 1.5 in the brood nest and 29.9 °C ± 5.8 in the food area. Average beehive weight was 38.2 kg ± 13.6. Some of our data, especially those related to humidity, contrast with previously published results for other studies about bees from Central and northern Europe. Conclusively, certain combinations of climatic factors may condition within hive humidity, temperature and hive weight. Southern Iberian honeybees’ brood nest humidity regulatory capacity could be lower than brood nest thermoregulatory capacity, maintaining values close to 34 °C, even in dry conditions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regulation of Microclimatic Conditions inside Native Beehives and Its Relationship with Climate in Southern Spain

et al. 2020

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“…Honey bees are a keystone species in the modern crop pollination landscape, generating an estimated global annual value of over $215 billion USD in agricultural production [ 1 , 2 ], but recent years have seen increasing challenges to the beekeeping industry [ 3 , 4 ]. Honey bees suffer from a combination of biotic and abiotic stressors, including pesticides, poor forage, and diseases, particularly viruses transmitted by the ectoparasitic Varroa mite ( Varroa destructor ) [ 5 , 6 , 7 ], all of which can lead to high rates of hive loss and subsequent replacement [ 8 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ameliorative Effects of Phytochemical Ingestion on Viral Infection in Honey Bees

Hsieh

Berenbaum

Doležal

2020

Insects

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Honey bee viruses are capable of causing a wide variety of devastating effects, but effective treatments have yet to be discovered. Phytochemicals represent a broad range of substances that honey bees frequently encounter and consume, many of which have been shown to improve honey bee health. However, their effect on bee viruses is largely unknown. Here, we tested the therapeutic effectiveness of carvacrol, thymol, p-coumaric acid, quercetin, and caffeine on viral infection by measuring their ability to improve survivorship in honey bees inoculated with Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) using high-throughput cage bioassays. Among these candidates, caffeine was the only phytochemical capable of significantly improving survivorship, with initial screening showing that naturally occurring concentrations of caffeine (25 ppm) were sufficient to produce an ameliorative effect on IAPV infection. Consequently, we measured the scope of caffeine effectiveness in bees inoculated and uninoculated with IAPV by performing the same type of high-throughput bioassay across a wider range of caffeine concentrations. Our results indicate that caffeine may provide benefits that scale with concentration, though the exact mechanism by which caffeine ingestion improves survivorship remains uncertain. Caffeine therefore has the potential to act as an accessible and inexpensive method of treating viral infections, while also serving as a tool to further understanding of honey bee–virus interactions at a physiological and molecular level.

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“…Without treatment against this mite, infested A. mellifera colonies usually die within 6 months to 2 years (Kraus and Page, 1995;Le Conte et al, 2010). In the wake of the occurrence of V. destructor in New Zealand in 2000 (Todd et al, 2007;Mondet et al, 2014) and in Hawaii in 2007 (Martin et al, 2012), this mite has been distributed globally except for Australia and a few remote islands (Muli et al, 2018;Noël et al, 2020;Traynor et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…V. destructor lives entirely on its host and cannot survive independently (Traynor et al, 2020) with two life cycles: the phoretic (non-reproductive) phase on the body surface of adult bees and the reproductive phase in the sealed brood cells with immature bees (Martin, 1994). Reproduction of the parasite starts from the oogenesis process, which occurs since approximately 6 h later after the invaded cell is capped and is crucial for understanding the reproductive biology of the parasite (Garrido et al, 2000;Häußermann et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genome-Wide Identification of Long Non-coding RNAs in the Gravid Ectoparasite Varroa destructor

et al. 2020

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Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) emerge as critical regulators across a wide variety of biological functions in living organisms. However, to date, no systematic characterization of lncRNAs has been investigated in the ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor, the most severe biotic threat to honey bees worldwide. Here, we performed an initial genome-wide identification of lncRNAs in V. destructor via high-throughput sequencing technology and reported, for the first time, the transcriptomic landscape of lncRNAs in the devastating parasite. By means of a lncRNA identification pipeline, 6,645 novel lncRNA transcripts, encoded by 3,897 gene loci, were identified, including 2,066 sense lncRNAs, 2,772 lincRNAs, and 1,807 lncNATs. Compared with protein-coding mRNAs, V. destructor lncRNAs are shorter in terms of full length, as well as of the ORF length, contain less exons, and express at lower level. GO term and KEGG pathway enrichment analyses of the lncRNA target genes demonstrated that these predicted lncRNAs may be potentially responsible for the regulatory functions of cellular and biological progresses in the reproductive phase of V. destructor. To our knowledge, this is the first catalog of lncRNA profile in the parasitiformes species, providing a valuable resource for genetic and genomic studies. Understanding the characteristics and features of lncRNAs in V. destructor would promote sustainable parasite control.

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Varroa destructor: A Complex Parasite, Crippling Honey Bees Worldwide

Cited by 253 publications

References 97 publications

Regulation of Microclimatic Conditions inside Native Beehives and Its Relationship with Climate in Southern Spain

Regulation of Microclimatic Conditions inside Native Beehives and Its Relationship with Climate in Southern Spain

Ameliorative Effects of Phytochemical Ingestion on Viral Infection in Honey Bees

Genome-Wide Identification of Long Non-coding RNAs in the Gravid Ectoparasite Varroa destructor

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