Abstract
Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are facing multiple stressors affecting their lifespan, health and productivity. Among them, Nosema ceranae is an intracellular microsporidian parasite, which plays a major impact on honey bees colonies. However, both efficiency and innocuity of current treatment against N. ceranae are observed, thus raising the urgent need to develop alternative prophylactic and curative strategies. Endogenous microbial communities (i.e. host microbiota) are known to play a major role in disease prevention, and more recently both bacterial and yeast strains issued from gut microbiota were observed to improve hosts resistance against intracellular parasites both in mammals and insect models. The use of probiotics in honey bee nutrition is therefore promising to treat or prevent diseases. Therefore, further investigations are needed to properly select microorganisms with probiotic properties. In an in vivo experimental infection by Nosema ceranae, the probiotic effect of two honeybee gut bacterial strains (Parasaccharibacter apium (PC1 sp.) and (Bacillus sp. (PC2 sp.)), and two broad spectra probiotics (Bactocell® and Levucell SB®) has been measured. Both curative and prophylactic administrations were tested: honey bees infected with N. ceranae and non-infected. For the four probiotic candidates, significant increases of survival probabilities (20-30%) were measured after two weeks of treatment with the administration of 103 CFU/mL in sugar syrup, both in curative and prophylactic treatments. The present study shows that endogenous bacterial strains were at least as much efficient and safe than broad spectra probiotics in increasing survival in the context of experimental infection with N. ceranae. Therefore, taking advantage of beneficial host microbiota properties is a promising avenue to develop efficient and sustainable curative strategies against opportunistic diseases in honey bee colonies.
Highlights
The European honey bee Apis mellifera is the most important pollinator present in the agricultural (Alberoni et al, 2016) environmental and economic sectors (Klein et al, 2017)
The present study shows that both endogenous bacterial strains were at least as much efficient and safe as broad spectra probiotics in significantly increasing survival in the context of experimental infection with N. ceranae
We showed that the amount of colony-forming unit (CFU) for both endogenous and commercial probiotic candidates were stable after 3 weeks in the sugar syrup (1:1), confirming that the syrup formulation was suitable for the administration of the four probiotics candidates
Summary
The European honey bee Apis mellifera is the most important pollinator present in the agricultural (Alberoni et al, 2016) environmental and economic sectors (Klein et al, 2017). Over the last few decades, major mortalities in honey bee colonies have been reported globally (Fairbrother et al, 2014; Vanegas, 2017). Numerous studies agree that synergetic interactions between multiple abiotics (Doublet et al, 2014; Alburaki et al, 2015; Kakumanu et al, 2016; Poquet et al, 2016; Li et al, 2017; López et al, 2017) and biotics stressors (Goulson et al, 2015; Dussaubat et al, 2016) are involved as major causes of bee colonies decline (see reviews by Fairbrother et al, 2014; Alberoni et al, 2016; Sánchez-Bayo et al, 2016; Klein et al, 2017). Synergies between many of these factors have a strong negative impact on immune defense (Nazzi et al, 2012; Di Prisco et al, 2013), metabolism (Koch and Schmid-Hempel, 2011; Dussaubat et al, 2013; Bordier et al, 2017), and on bees cognitive mechanisms (Klein et al, 2017)
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