Abstract

The Carniolan honey bee (Apis mellifera carnica) plays an essential role in crop pollination, environment diversity, and the production of honey bee products. However, the health of individual honey bees and their colonies is under pressure due to multiple stressors, including viruses as a significant threat to bees. Monitoring various virus infections could be a crucial selection tool during queen rearing. In the present study, samples from all developmental stages (eggs, larvae, pupae, and queens) were screened for the incidence of seven viruses during queen rearing in Slovenia. The screening of a total of 108 samples from five queen breeders was performed by the RT-qPCR assays. The results showed that the highest incidence was observed for black queen cell virus (BQCV), Lake Sinai virus 3 (LSV3), deformed wing virus B (DWV-B), and sacbrood virus (SBV). The highest viral load was detected in queens (6.07 log10 copies/queen) and larvae (5.50 log10 copies/larva) for BQCV, followed by SBV in larvae (5.47 log10 copies/larva). When comparing all the honey bee developmental stages, the eggs exhibited general screening for virus incidence and load in queen mother colonies. The results suggest that analyzing eggs is a good indicator of resilience to virus infection during queen development.

Details

Title
Eggs sampling as an effective tool for identifying the incidence of viruses in honey bees involved in artificial queen rearing
Author
Domingues, Caio E. C. 1 ; Šimenc, Laura 2 ; Toplak, Ivan 2 ; de Graaf, Dirk C. 3 ; De Smet, Lina 3 ; Verbeke, Wim 4 ; Peelman, Luc 5 ; Ansaloni, Leticia S. 1 ; Gregorc, Aleš 1 

 University of Maribor, Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Hoče, Slovenia (GRID:grid.8647.d) (ISNI:0000 0004 0637 0731) 
 University of Ljubljana, Institute of Microbiology and Parasitology, Veterinary Faculty, Ljubljana, Slovenia (GRID:grid.8954.0) (ISNI:0000 0001 0721 6013) 
 Ghent University, Laboratory of Molecular Entomology and Bee Pathology, Ghent, Belgium (GRID:grid.5342.0) (ISNI:0000 0001 2069 7798) 
 Ghent University, Department of Agricultural Economics, Ghent, Belgium (GRID:grid.5342.0) (ISNI:0000 0001 2069 7798) 
 Ghent University, Laboratory of Animal Genetics, Department of Veterinary and Biosciences, Merelbeke, Belgium (GRID:grid.5342.0) (ISNI:0000 0001 2069 7798) 
Pages
9612
Publication year
2024
Publication date
2024
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
3047001123
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2024. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.