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Identification of nanoparticles on the surface of thorax, abdomen & wings of Apis dorsata Fabricius

Abstract The presence of nanoparticles on the body of the honeybee Apis dorsata Fabricius, was investigated for the frst time to better understand the bee’s behaviour. These have been observed by using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and confrmed by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Our study clearly denotes that the Indian rock honey bee Apis…

Honey bees exposed to sub-lethal doses of imidacloprid in laboratory and field experiments

Abstract In this study, different context-dependent effects of imidacloprid exposure on the honey bee response were studied. Honey bees were exposed to different concentrations of imidacloprid during a time period of 40 days. Next to these variables, a laboratory-field comparison was conducted. The influence of the chronic exposure on gene expression levels was determined using…

Evaluation of Non-Chemical Traps for Management of Wax Moth Populations within Honey Bee Colonies

Abstract Wax moth larvae (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) are serious pests on wax combs outside and inside of beehives. Management of wax moths is particularly difficult inside hive bodies housing weak colonies. In this study, five traps were designed and evaluated for their efficacy to attract mature larvae inside beehives. These traps were: (1) mesh envelope trap…

Impacts of oxalic acid, thymol, and potassium citrate as Varroa control materials on some parameters

Abstract Various treatments are currently available for the control of Varroa mites. Some of these treatments depend on using natural and nonchemical compounds. In this study, the impacts of some materials (oxalic acid, thymol, and potassium citrate) on the survival of honey bees and some quality parameters were investigated under laboratory conditions. The potential impacts…

Food consumption and food exchange of caged honey bees using a radioactive labelled sugar solution

Abstract We measured the distribution of sugar solution within groups of caged honey bees (Apis mellifera) under standard in vitro laboratory conditions using 14C polyethylene glycol as a radioactive marker to analyze ingestion by individual bees after group feeding. We studied the impact of different experimental setups by varying the number of bees, age of bees, origin of…

Analyses of major royal jelly protein gene cluster in 3 Apis species with long amplicon sequencing

Abstract The western honeybee, Apis mellifera is a prominent model organism in the field of sociogenomics and a recent upgrade substantially improved annotations of the reference genome. Nevertheless, genome assemblies based on short-sequencing reads suffer from problems in regions comprising e.g. multi-copy genes. We used single-molecule nanopore-based sequencing with extensive read-lengths to reconstruct the organization of the major…

SNPs outperform randomly selected microsatellite loci for delineating genetic identification

Abstract The honeybee (Apis mellifera) has been threatened by multiple factors including pests and pathogens, pesticides and loss of locally adapted gene complexes due to replacement and introgression. In western Europe, the genetic integrity of the native A. m. mellifera (M-lineage) is endangered due to trading and intensive queen breeding with commercial subspecies of eastern…

Modelling seasonal effects of temperature and precipitation on honey bee winter mortality

Abstract Insect pollinators are essential to global food production. For this reason, it is alarming that honey bee (Apis mellifera) populations across the world have recently seen increased rates of mortality. These changes in colony mortality are often ascribed to one or more factors including parasites, diseases, pesticides, nutrition, habitat dynamics, weather and/or climate. However,…