Abstract
Honey bee hives are moved yearly mainly for pollination, but also to take advantage of consecutive flowering events to get as many harvests of honey as possible and/or to find favorable sites for food sources and summer temperatures. Such movements may lead to pathogen spill-over with consequences on the honey bee health and finally on population decline. Ascosphaera apis is the causative agent of the chalkbrood disease, a pathology affecting honey bee larvae that significantly harms population growth and colony productivity. In this study, we detected the presence of A. apis in adult worker honey bees by PCR-amplification of the intergenic transcribed spacer (ITS1) of the ribosomal gene (rDNA). We first optimized the DNA extraction by testing different protocols in individual and pooled (colony level) adult honey bee samples. Subsequently, the presence of the fungus A. apis was assessed in both stationary and migratory colonies (subjected to small scale regional level movements) to determine the effect of migratory practices on the dispersal of this pathogen. Results confirmed a higher prevalence of A. apis in migratory apiaries when compared to stationary ones, indicating that migratory colonies are more likely to develop chalkbrood disease. Given these results, we suggest that beekeepers should be aware of the risks of pathogens spreading while moving beehives, even within a reduced geographic range.
Highlights
The benefits of safeguarding pollinators, especially the honey bee Apis mellifera as the most economically important pollinator insect, have been recently articulated (Potts et al, 2016)
This study investigates a possible correlation between the prevalence of A. apis in honey bee colonies and the practice of small-scale migratory beekeeping
We detected the fungus A. apis by extracting DNA with the Chelex method directly from adult worker honey bees sampled from brood combs
Summary
The benefits of safeguarding pollinators, especially the honey bee Apis mellifera as the most economically important pollinator insect, have been recently articulated (Potts et al, 2016) In this sense, sustainable hive management is among the strategies to avoid pollinator decline, as it has been shown that techniques such as migratory beekeeping increase oxidative stress levels in honey bees (Simone-Finstrom et al, 2016), and favor the spread of pathogens (Cavigli et al, 2016). There are 2.7 million beehives (data from 2015; REGA 2016), of which 80% are moved by professional beekeepers (a beekeeper is considered to be professional when he/she manages more than 150 beehives per year; mean is 406 beehives per beekeeper) This practice usually leads to increased honey production, it can imply higher costs due to transportation and colony losses that may counteract the actual economic benefits
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