Dataset Information

Investigating the role of landscape composition on honey bee colony winter mortality: A long-term analysis.

ABSTRACT: The health of honey bee colonies is, amongst others, affected by the amount, quality and diversity of available melliferous plants. Since landscape is highly diverse throughout Austria regarding the availability of nutritional resources, we used data from annual surveys on honey bee colony losses ranging over six years to analyse a possible relationship with land use. The data set comprises reports from a total of 6,655 beekeepers and 129,428 wintered honey bee colonies. Regions surrounding the beekeeping operations were assigned to one of six clusters according to their composition of land use categories by use of a hierarchical cluster analysis, allowing a rough distinction between urban regions, regions predominated by semi-natural areas and pastures, and mainly agricultural environments. We ran a Generalised Linear Mixed Model and found winter colony mortality significantly affected by operation size, year, and cluster membership, but also by the interaction of year and cluster membership. Honey bee colonies in regions composed predominantly of semi-natural areas, coniferous forests and pastures had the lowest loss probability in four out of six years, and loss probabilities within these regions were significantly lower in five out of six years compared to those within regions composed predominantly of artificial surfaces, broad-leaved and coniferous forest.

SUBMITTER: Kuchling S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6095838 | biostudies-other | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Investigating the role of landscape composition on honey bee colony winter mortality: A long-term analysis.

Kuchling Sabrina S Kopacka Ian I Kalcher-Sommersguter Elfriede E Schwarz Michael M Crailsheim Karl K Brodschneider Robert R

Scientific reports 20180816 1

The health of honey bee colonies is, amongst others, affected by the amount, quality and diversity of available melliferous plants. Since landscape is highly diverse throughout Austria regarding the availability of nutritional resources, we used data from annual surveys on honey bee colony losses ranging over six years to analyse a possible relationship with land use. The data set comprises reports from a total of 6,655 beekeepers and 129,428 wintered honey bee colonies. Regions surrounding the ...[more]

PMID: 30116056

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Project description:Honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies continue to experience high annual losses that remain poorly explained. Numerous interacting factors have been linked to colony declines. Understanding the pathways linking pathophysiology with symptoms is an important step in understanding the mechanisms of disease. In this study we examined the specific pathologies associated with honey bees collected from colonies suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and compared these with bees collected from apparently healthy colonies. We identified a set of pathological physical characteristics that occurred at different rates in CCD diagnosed colonies prior to their collapse: rectum distension, Malpighian tubule iridescence, fecal matter consistency, rectal enteroliths (hard concretions), and venom sac color. The multiple differences in rectum symptomology in bees from CCD apiaries and colonies suggest effected bees had trouble regulating water. To ensure that pathologies we found associated with CCD were indeed pathologies and not due to normal changes in physical appearances that occur as an adult bee ages (CCD colonies are assumed to be composed mostly of young bees), we documented the changes in bees of different ages taken from healthy colonies. We found that young bees had much greater incidences of white nodules than older cohorts. Prevalent in newly-emerged bees, these white nodules or cellular encapsulations indicate an active immune response. Comparing the two sets of characteristics, we determined a subset of pathologies that reliably predict CCD status rather than bee age (fecal matter consistency, rectal distension size, rectal enteroliths and Malpighian tubule iridescence) and that may serve as biomarkers for colony health. In addition, these pathologies suggest that CCD bees are experiencing disrupted excretory physiology. Our identification of these symptoms is an important first step in understanding the physiological pathways that underlie CCD and factors impacting bee health.

Project description:Identifying the floral composition of honey provides a method for investigating the plants that honey bees visit. We compared melissopalynology, where pollen grains retrieved from honey are identified morphologically, with a DNA metabarcoding approach using the rbcL DNA barcode marker and 454-pyrosequencing. We compared nine honeys supplied by beekeepers in the UK. DNA metabarcoding and melissopalynology were able to detect the most abundant floral components of honey. There was 92% correspondence for the plant taxa that had an abundance of over 20%. However, the level of similarity when all taxa were compared was lower, ranging from 22-45%, and there was little correspondence between the relative abundance of taxa found using the two techniques. DNA metabarcoding provided much greater repeatability, with a 64% taxa match compared to 28% with melissopalynology. DNA metabarcoding has the advantage over melissopalynology in that it does not require a high level of taxonomic expertise, a greater sample size can be screened and it provides greater resolution for some plant families. However, it does not provide a quantitative approach and pollen present in low levels are less likely to be detected. We investigated the plants that were frequently used by honey bees by examining the results obtained from both techniques. Plants with a broad taxonomic range were detected, covering 46 families and 25 orders, but a relatively small number of plants were consistently seen across multiple honey samples. Frequently found herbaceous species were Rubus fruticosus, Filipendula ulmaria, Taraxacum officinale, Trifolium spp., Brassica spp. and the non-native, invasive, Impatiens glandulifera. Tree pollen was frequently seen belonging to Castanea sativa, Crataegus monogyna and species of Malus, Salix and Quercus. We conclude that although honey bees are considered to be supergeneralists in their foraging choices, there are certain key species or plant groups that are particularly important in the honey bees environment. The reasons for this require further investigation in order to better understand honey bee nutritional requirements. DNA metabarcoding can be easily and widely used to investigate floral visitation in honey bees and can be adapted for use with other insects. It provides a starting point for investigating how we can better provide for the insects that we rely upon for pollination.

Dataset Information

Investigating the role of landscape composition on honey bee colony winter mortality: A long-term analysis.

Publications

Investigating the role of landscape composition on honey bee colony winter mortality: A long-term analysis.

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