Agricultural and apicultural practices expose honeybees to a range of pesticides that have the potential to negatively affect their physiology, neurobiology, and behavior. Accumulating evidence suggests that these effects extend to the honeybee gut microbiome, which serves important functions for honeybee health. Here we test the potential effects of the pesticides thiacloprid, acetamiprid, and oxalic…
Plant reproduction in red clover requires cross-fertilization via insect pollination. However, the influences of visitation rate and timing on maximizing ovule utilization are yet to be determined. We aimed to study the influences of visitation rate, flowering stage, and self-incompatibility on reproductive success. We applied hand and honey bee pollination in the study of eight…
A Bee World article on the use of Citizen Scientist on varroa research. Citizen Science is the involvement of volunteers in science and CSI Varroa project is an initiative of COLOSS members, started at the end of 2018, aiming to gain more knowledge about varroa infestation thresholds above which beekeepers start observing economic damages, and…
As part of the MUST‐B project, a research project on field data collection for honey bee colony model evaluation was carried out in 2018‐2020. In a preparatory phase (2018), methods for monitoring of honey bee colonies were tested, field operators trained, and experimental colonies established. The main field experiment was conducted in 2019‐2020, during which…
In red clover seed production, low seed yield is limiting the commercial exploitation of tetraploid red clover. To explore if pollination is the limiting factor for the seed yield in tetraploid red clover, we investigated pollinator behaviour and plant reproductive success in diploid (2x) cultivar ‘Rajah’ and tetraploid (4x) cultivar ‘Amos’ using honey bee and…
Abstract: Simone Tos, James C. Nieh, Annely Brandt, Monica Colli, Julie Fourrier, Herve Giffard, Javier Hernández-López, Valeria Malagnini, Geoffrey R. Williams, Noa Simon-Delso The assessment of pesticide risks to insect pollinators have typically focused on short-term, lethal impacts. The environmental ramifications of many of the world’s most commonly employed pesticides, such as those exhibiting systemic…
Many different pollinators often visit the same flower, as seen in this image where a buff-tailed bumble bee (Bombus terrestris), a red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) and a small sweat bee (Lasioglossum sp.) are sharing a plume thistle Cirsium rivulare flower. On pages 623-636, Willem Proesmans and colleagues discuss how sharing of flowers in this way is a potential…
Microplastics (MPs) are ubiquitous and persistent pollutants, and have been detected in a wide variety of media, from soils to aquatic systems. MPs, consisting primarily of polyethylene, polypropylene, and polyacrylamide polymers, have recently been found in 12% of samples of honey collected in Ecuador. Recently, MPs have also been identified in honey bees collected from…
Abstract: Assessment of colony infestation by Varroa destructor is a crucial part of the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) applied to beekeeping. Natural mite fall, quantified by counting the mites on sticky sheets, is considered a reference method to estimate varroa infestation level in honey bee colonies. However, in recent years, alternative methods that can be…
Abstract The One Health approach acknowledges that human health is firmly linked to animal and environmental health. It involves using animals such as bees and other pollinators as sentinels for environmental contamination or biological indicators. Beekeepers noticed intoxications of apiaries located in the vicinity of sheep and cattle farms, which led to the suspicion of…