Abstract
Slovenia has a long tradition of beekeeping and a high density of honeybee colonies, but less is known about bumblebees and their pathogens. Therefore, a study was conducted to define the incidence and prevalence of pathogens in bumblebees and to determine whether there are links between infections in bumblebees and honeybees. In 2017 and 2018, clinically healthy workers of bumblebees (Bombus spp.) and honeybees (Apis mellifera) were collected on flowers at four different locations in Slovenia. In addition, bumblebee queens were also collected in 2018. Several pathogens were detected in the bumblebee workers using PCR and RT-PCR methods: 8.8% on acute bee paralysis virus (ABPV), 58.5% on black queen cell virus (BQCV), 6.8% on deformed wing virus (DWV), 24.5% on sacbrood bee virus (SBV), 15.6% on Lake Sinai virus (LSV), 16.3% on Nosema bombi, 8.2% on Nosema ceranae, 15.0% on Apicystis bombi and 17.0% on Crithidia bombi. In bumblebee queens, only the presence of BQCV, A. bombi and C. bombi was detected with 73.3, 26.3 and 33.3% positive samples, respectively. This study confirmed that several pathogens are regularly detected in both bumblebees and honeybees. Further studies on the pathogen transmission routes are required.
Highlights
Honeybees and wild pollinators play an essential role in plant pollination, which is important for both agricultural production and biodiversity conservation [1,2]
Several pathogens were detected in the bumblebee workers using Polymerase chain reactions (PCR) and reverse transcription and polymerase chain reaction method (RT-PCR) methods: 8.8% on acute bee paralysis virus (ABPV), 58.5% on black queen cell virus (BQCV), 6.8% on deformed wing virus (DWV), 24.5% on sacbrood bee virus (SBV), 15.6% on Lake Sinai virus (LSV), 16.3% on Nosema bombi, 8.2% on Nosema ceranae, 15.0% on Apicystis bombi and 17.0% on Crithidia bombi
8.8% of bumblebee workers were detected positive on ABPV, 58.5% were positive on BQCV, 6.8% were positive on DWV, 24.5% were positive on SBV, 15.6% were positive on LSV, 16.3% were positive on N. bombi, 8.2% were positive on N. ceranae, 15.0% were positive on A. bombi and 17.0% were positive on C. bombi (Table 1)
Summary
Honeybees and wild pollinators play an essential role in plant pollination, which is important for both agricultural production and biodiversity conservation [1,2]. In addition to the honeybees, the role of wild pollinators is very important, as they are in many cases even more effective than honeybees and it is known that honeybees can complement but not replace wild pollinators [3]. Important reasons for the decline of pollinator populations and diversity are habitat degradation and loss mainly due to urbanisation [6], intensive agriculture, which involves the use of pesticides [7,8] and climate changes [9,10], and various pathogens that affect wild pollinators [5,11,12,13,14]
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