Research Articles

Honeybees defend their colonies aggressively against intruders and release a potent alarm pheromone to recruit nestmates into defensive tasks. The effect of floral odours on this behaviour has never been studied, despite the relevance of these olfactory cues for the biology of bees. Here we use a novel assay to investigate social and olfactory cues that drive defensive behaviour in bees. We show that social interactions are necessary to reveal the recruiting function of the alarm pheromone and that specific floral odours—linalool and 2-phenylethanol—have the surprising capacity to block recruitment by the alarm pheromone. This effect is not due ...

In North County Dublin, Ireland, a region that has a relatively self-contained beekeeping regime with little movement of colonies or queens into the area, tolerance (co-adaptation) to varroa mites is becoming established ...

Conservation efforts for A. m. mellifera are underway in multiple European countries requiring reliable and cost-efficient molecular tools to identify purebred colonies. Here, we developed four ancestry-informative SNP assays for high sample throughput genotyping using the iPLEX Mass Array system ...

This article by Dorian Pritchard was originally published in BIM 30 Winter 2008 ...

The rich variety of native honeybee subspecies and ecotypes in Europe offers a good genetic resource for selection towards Varroa resistance ...

North Wales BIBBA groups have teamed up with South Clwyd Beekeepers and Bangor University. The first study by Bangor concerned a survey of bee wings throughout South Clwyd. The wings were analysed using DrawWing and Morphplot. The samples were collected by BIBBA breeding groups and members of SCBKA and then tested by a number of BIBBA queen rearers and the Bangor researcher Elise Keller. A similar study was conducted in 2015 by Bangor’s Sue Loughran and a third one in 2016 by Bangor’s Cheryl Owen. Starting this winter it is hoped that a particularly interesting study will be conducted ...

The main problem of the black honeybee in Russia and European countries is the preservation of the indigenous gene pool purity; A new approach to the classification of the honeybee M mitotypes was suggested ...

Professor Dave Goulson – Bees, Pesticide and Politics: the impact of neonicotinoids on UK bumblebees ...

abstract of thesis Catherine Eleanor Thompson: While declines in managed honeybee colonies are well documented, little is known about the health and status of feral honeybee populations. To date no studies have considered the wider pathogen burden in feral colonies, whether they represent a genetically distinct population, a remnant native population or a unique source of genetic resistance ...

Comparing Alternative Methods for Holding Virgin Honey Bee Queens for One Week in Mailing Cages before Mating ...

we compared the levels of hygiene in colonies headed by daughter queens reared from hygienic mother colonies that were either instrumentally inseminated with sperm from drones reared from hygienic colonies or allowed to mate naturally with naturally-occurring drones ...

On average, colonies with queens from local origin survived 83 days longer compared to non-local origins (p < 0.001). This result demonstrates strong genotype by environment interactions. Consequently, the conservation of bee diversity and the support of local breeding activities must be prioritised in order to prevent colony losses, to optimize a sustainable productivity and to enable a continuous adaptation to environmental changes ...

Honey bees are under constant pressure from a whole host of stresses—diseases, poor nutrition,sublethal effects of pesticides, and many others. While researchers have been aware for a number of years of a community of bacteria in adult bees that may aid with some of these stresses,Agricultural Research Service researchers have identified the first bacteria that offer a benefit to bee larvae ...

This publication from the COLOSS beebook covers a wide range of methods currently in use and recommended in modern queen rearing, selection and breeding ...

This system describes an essential tool in Europe for genetic stock identification and estimation of admixture levels which can assist management strategies and monitor honey bee conservation programs. View pdf ...

locally adapted strains of honey bee consistently performed better than the “foreign” strains. Honey bee genotypes and the environment In recent years, much attention has been focused on the global problem of honey bee colony losses. Among the many explanations for these losses, variability in the genetic makeup and vitality of honey bee populations ...

We found clear evidence for an extensive diversity in male mating success at the colony level. Some colonies had significantly more matings (about an order of magnitude) than other drone producing colonies in the same year ...