Abstract
American and European Foulbrood (AFB and EFB) are considered the most contagious infectious diseases affecting honeybees worldwide. New sustainable strategies need to be implemented for their prevention and control, and probiotics may represent one solution to investigate. In our study, we evaluated the efficacy of one strain of Lactobacillus plantarum (L. plantarum) isolated from northern Italy, orally administered to the bees for AFB and EFB prevention. From March to September 2014, a total of 979 honeybee colonies (9.6% of Viterbo province—Central Italy) were taken under observation from 22 apiaries. Overall prevalence of AFB was 5.3% in treated colonies and 5.1% in the untreated ones. On the contrary, EFB prevalence was lower in the treated colonies (2.5%) compared to the untreated ones (4.5%). L. plantarum showed a significant effect in reducing insurgence of cases of EFB up to 35 days after the end of the treatment (p-value: 0.034). Thanks to this study we could investigate the preventive efficacy of L. plantarum in controlling AFB and EFB, and obtain official data on their clinical prevalence in Central Italy.
Highlights
Recent losses of managed honeybee colonies and the need to reduce the use of veterinary medicines at the apiary level to reach sustainable beekeeping goals are leading to a growing interest in the development of new strategies for disease prevention and control, under the One Health approach [1].American Foulbrood (AFB) and European Foulbrood (EFB) are the two major bacterial diseases affecting honeybee brood and present a considerable threat to beekeeping worldwide [2]
Young larvae are infected through ingestion of food contaminated by the extremely resilient endospores of the bacterium
Field trials were carried out from March 2014 to September 2014 (220 days) in 22 apiaries distributed in the Viterbo province (Central Italy), in an area of approximately 2700 km2 (Figure 1)
Summary
American Foulbrood (AFB) and European Foulbrood (EFB) are the two major bacterial diseases affecting honeybee brood and present a considerable threat to beekeeping worldwide [2]. These diseases are classified within the OIE—World Organisation for Animal. AFB, considered the most serious and widespread brood infection, is caused by the spore forming, Gram-positive bacterium Paenibacillus larvae [5,6]. In most countries AFB is a notifiable disease, must be reported to the relevant government authorities [6] and is included in the new EU Animal Health Law (Regulation (EU) 2016/429)
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