Abstract
Microbial communities (microbiomes) are associated with almost all metazoans, including the honey bee Apis mellifera. Honey bees are social insects, maintaining complex hive systems composed of a variety of integral components including bees, comb, propolis, honey, and stored pollen. Given that the different components within hives can be physically separated and are nutritionally variable, we hypothesize that unique microbial communities may occur within the different microenvironments of honey bee colonies. To explore this hypothesis and to provide further insights into the microbiome of honey bees, we use a hybrid of fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) and phospholipid-derived fatty acid (PLFA) analysis to produce broad, lipid-based microbial community profiles of stored pollen, adults, pupae, honey, empty comb, and propolis for 11 honey bee hives. Averaging component lipid profiles by hive, we show that, in decreasing order, lipid markers representing fungi, Gram-negative bacteria, and Gram-positive bacteria have the highest relative abundances within honey bee colonies. Our lipid profiles reveal the presence of viable microbial communities in each of the six hive components sampled, with overall microbial community richness varying from lowest to highest in honey, comb, pupae, pollen, adults and propolis, respectively. Finally, microbial community lipid profiles were more similar when compared by component than by hive, location, or sampling year. Specifically, we found that individual hive components typically exhibited several dominant lipids and that these dominant lipids differ between components. Principal component and two-way clustering analyses both support significant grouping of lipids by hive component. Our findings indicate that in addition to the microbial communities present in individual workers, honey bee hives have resident microbial communities associated with different colony components.
Highlights
Most, if not all, metazoans are associated with consistent and sometimes specialized microbial communities, and these microbiomes are increasingly recognized for their important role in shaping the biology of their hosts [1]
Hive components from a total of 11 different Apis mellifera colonies were sampled from 4 different locations (S1 Table) in south central Wisconsin during the midsummers and early falls of 2006, 2008 and 2010
To begin to determine if the microbial communities within honey bee colonies are structured by hive, geographic location, sampling year, or hive component, we performed one-way ANOVAs and Tukey-Kramer HSD tests on lipid profiles that were synthesized by grouping each individual lipid by these different factors (Tables 3 and 4)
Summary
If not all, metazoans are associated with consistent and sometimes specialized microbial communities, and these microbiomes are increasingly recognized for their important role in shaping the biology of their hosts [1]. To generate an overall description of the microbiota of honey bee colonies, we sampled individual hive components, including workers, honey, comb, propolis, pollen stores and pupae from 11 Apis mellifera hives and employed a hybrid of fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) and phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analyses. In this method, lipid biomarkers are used to identify and provide relative abundance estimates for specific groups of microbes within a given niche as FAMEs are formed from all fatty acids and PLFAs are the constitutive lipids of cell membranes, both of which are unique to groups of organisms [29]. If different microbial communities are associated with different hive components in honey bees
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