Design and Application of a Hive-Mounted Device That Uses Honey Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) To Disseminate Heliothis Nuclear Polyhedrosis Virus

Abstract

The honey bee, Apis mellifera L., is a highly efficient forager on numerous flowering plants that host phytophagous insect pests. Because of these associations, honey bees theoretically provide an economical and nonintrusive means of conveying biorational mortality agents against pest species. This hypothesis was tested during April 1989 by employing a specially designed plexiglass and sheet metal applicator that causes honey bees to disseminate a talc formulation of Heliothis nuclear polyhedrosis virus (HNPV) into fields of crimson clover, Trifolium incarnatum L. The device when integrated into a specifically designed substructure of a conventional beehive provided separate entry and departure pathways for honey bees, which allowed bees to be surface-contaminated with the HNPV formulation as they exited the hive. The mean percentage of HNPV-induced mortality was significantly higher among Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) larvae that fed on clover heads from fields foraged by HNPV-contaminated A. mellifera and among Heliothis or Helicoverpa spp. larvae collected from those fields than among similarly exposed control larvae. HNPV in honey collected from treatment hives and stored at 26 ± 1°C in total darkness remained active for at least 170 d. The extent to which the technology for using A. mellifera to disseminate insect pathogens is applicable for pest control will depend on an improved understanding of the interrelationships among A. mellifera , flowering plants on which they forage, targeted phytophages which reside on the plants, and the availability of pathogens which attack the phytophages.