Simulation of the Feedbacks and Regulation of Recruitment Dancing in Honey Bees

1998 ◽  
Vol 01 (02n03) ◽  
pp. 267-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Honey Bee ◽  
Honey Bees ◽  
Waggle Dance ◽  
Fluctuating Environment ◽  
Worker Allocation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Parameter Values ◽  
Tremble Dance ◽  
Threshold Rule

Honey bee nectar foragers returning to the hive experience a delay as they search for a receiver bee to whom they transfer their material. In this paper I describe the simulation of the "threshold rule" (Seeley, 1995) which relates the magnitude of this search delay to the probability of performing a recriutment dance — waggle dance, tremble dance, or no dance. Results show that this rule leads to self-organised near-optimal worker allocation in a fluctuating environment, is extremely robust, and operates over a wide range of parameter values. The reason for the robustness appears to be the particular sytem of feedbacks that operate within the system.

scholarly journals Hydroxymethylfurfural Affects Caged Honey Bees (Apis mellifera carnica)

Diversity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleš Gregorc ◽  
Snežana Jurišić ◽  
Blair Sampson
Keyword(s):  
Apis Mellifera ◽  
Honey Bee ◽  
Honey Bees ◽  
Immunohistochemical Analysis ◽  
Cellular Level ◽  
High Concentration ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Apis Mellifera Carnica ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Bee Health

A high concentration of hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) (e.g., 15 mg HMF per kg honey) indicates quality deterioration for a wide range of foods. In honey bee colonies, HMF in stored honey can negatively affect bee health and survival. Therefore, in the laboratory, we experimentally determined the effects of HMF on the longevity and midgut integrity of worker Apis mellifera carnica by feeding bees standard diets containing five concentrations of HMF (100, 500, 1000, and 1500 ppm). Simultaneously, we also examined HMF’s effect on Nosema ceranae spore counts within infected honey bees. We performed an immunohistochemical analysis of the honey bee midgut to determine possible changes at the cellular level. No correlation was established between HMF concentration and N. ceranae spore counts. Negative effects of HMF on bees were not observed in the first 15 days of exposure. However, after 15 to 30 days of exposure, HMF caused midgut cells to die and an increased mortality of honey bee workers across treatment groups.

scholarly journals Follower Position Does Not Affect Waggle Dance Information Transfer

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parry M. Kietzman ◽  
P. Kirk Visscher
Keyword(s):  
Honey Bee ◽  
Honey Bees ◽  
Information Transfer ◽  
Food Source ◽  
Waggle Dance

It is known that the honey bee waggle dance communicates the distance and direction of some item of interest, most commonly a food source, to nestmates. Previous work suggests that, in order to successfully acquire the information contained in a dance, other honey bees must follow the dancer from behind. We revisit this topic using updated methodology, including a greater distance from the hive to the feeder, which produced longer, more easily-read dances. Our results are not congruent with those of earlier work, and we did not conclude that honey bees must follow a dancer from behind in order to obtain the dance information. Rather, it is more likely that a follower can successfully acquire a dance’s information regardless of where she may be located about a dancer.

scholarly journals Parallel Mechanism Composed of Abdominal Cuticles and Muscles Simulates the Complex and Diverse Movements of Honey Bee (Apis mellifera L.) Abdomen

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Youjian Liang ◽  
Kuilin Meng ◽  
Jieliang Zhao ◽  
Jing Ren ◽  
Siqin Ge ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Apis Mellifera ◽  
Honey Bee ◽  
Honey Bees ◽  
Parallel Mechanism ◽  
Waggle Dance ◽  
View Point ◽  
Attitude Adjustment ◽  
Behavioral Activities ◽  
Adjacent Segments ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The abdominal intersegmental structures allow insects, such as honey bees, dragonflies, butterflies, and drosophilae, to complete diverse behavioral movements. In order to reveal how the complex abdominal movements of these insects are produced, we use the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) as a typical insect to study the relationship between intersegmental structures and abdominal motions. Microstructure observational experiments are performed by using the stereoscope and the scanning electron microscope. We find that a parallel mechanism, composed of abdominal cuticle and muscles between the adjacent segments, produces the complex and diverse movements of the honey bee abdomen. These properties regulate multiple behavioral activities such as waggle dance and flight attitude adjustment. The experimental results demonstrate that it is the joint efforts of the muscles and membranes that connected the adjacent cuticles together. The honey bee abdomen can be waggled, expanded, contracted, and flexed with the actions of the muscles. From the view point of mechanics, a parallel mechanism is evolved from the intersegmental connection structures of the honey bee abdomen. Here, we conduct a kinematic analysis of the parallel mechanism to simulate the intersegmental abdominal motions.

scholarly journals Pathogens Spillover from Honey Bees to Other Arthropods

Pathogens ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 1044 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Nanetti ◽  
Laura Bortolotti ◽  
Giovanni Cilia
Keyword(s):  
Apis Mellifera ◽  
Honey Bee ◽  
Honey Bees ◽  
Host Species ◽  
Close Contact ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Geographic Area ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Final Host ◽  
Wide Range

Honey bees, and pollinators in general, play a major role in the health of ecosystems. There is a consensus about the steady decrease in pollinator populations, which raises global ecological concern. Several drivers are implicated in this threat. Among them, honey bee pathogens are transmitted to other arthropods populations, including wild and managed pollinators. The western honey bee, Apis mellifera, is quasi-globally spread. This successful species acted as and, in some cases, became a maintenance host for pathogens. This systematic review collects and summarizes spillover cases having in common Apis mellifera as the mainteinance host and some of its pathogens. The reports are grouped by final host species and condition, year, and geographic area of detection and the co-occurrence in the same host. A total of eighty-one articles in the time frame 1960–2021 were included. The reported spillover cases cover a wide range of hymenopteran host species, generally living in close contact with or sharing the same environmental resources as the honey bees. They also involve non-hymenopteran arthropods, like spiders and roaches, which are either likely or unlikely to live in close proximity to honey bees. Specific studies should consider host-dependent pathogen modifications and effects on involved host species. Both the plasticity of bee pathogens and the ecological consequences of spillover suggest a holistic approach to bee health and the implementation of a One Health approach.

scholarly journals Limited Cross Plant Movement and Non-Crop Preferences Reduce the Efficiency of Honey Bees as Pollinators of Hybrid Carrot Seed Crops

Insects ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Gaffney ◽  
Björn Bohman ◽  
Stephen Quarrell ◽  
Philip Brown ◽  
Geoff Allen
Keyword(s):  
Honey Bee ◽  
Honey Bees ◽  
Male Sterile ◽  
Visitation Rates ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Bee Foraging ◽  
Carrot Seed ◽  
Honey Bee Foraging ◽  
Plant Movement ◽  
Seed Crops

Pollination rates in hybrid carrot crops remain limited after introduction of honey bee hives. In this study, honey bee foraging behaviour was observed in commercial hybrid carrot seed crops. Significantly more visits were made to male-fertile (MF) rather than cytoplasmically male-sterile (CMS) flowers. Pollen was collected from bees returning to a hive, to determine daily variation in pollen loads collected and to what level the bees were foraging for carrot pollen. Honey bees visited a wide range of alternative pollen sources and made relatively few visits to carrot plants throughout the period of flowering. Visitation rates to other individual floral sources fluctuated but visitation to carrot was consistently low. The underlying rate of carrot pollen visits among collecting trips was modelled and estimated to be as low as 1.4%, a likely cause of the limited success implementing honey bee hives in carrot crops.

scholarly journals The Honey Bee Gene Bee Antiviral Protein-1 Is a Taxonomically Restricted Antiviral Immune Gene

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander J. McMenamin ◽  
Laura M. Brutscher ◽  
Katie F. Daughenbaugh ◽  
Michelle L. Flenniken
Keyword(s):  
Honey Bee ◽  
Honey Bees ◽  
Sequence Similarity ◽  
Phylogenetic Analyses ◽  
Immune Gene ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Antiviral Defense ◽  
Antiviral Protein ◽  
Argonaute 2 ◽  
Wide Range

Insects have evolved a wide range of strategies to combat invading pathogens, including viruses. Genes that encode proteins involved in immune responses often evolve under positive selection due to their co-evolution with pathogens. Insect antiviral defense includes the RNA interference (RNAi) mechanism, which is triggered by recognition of non-self, virally produced, double-stranded RNAs. Indeed, insect RNAi genes (e.g., dicer and argonaute-2) are under high selective pressure. Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are eusocial insects that respond to viral infections via both sequence specific RNAi and a non-sequence specific dsRNA triggered pathway, which is less well-characterized. A transcriptome-level study of virus-infected and/or dsRNA-treated honey bees revealed increased expression of a novel antiviral gene, GenBank: MF116383, and in vivo experiments confirmed its antiviral function. Due to in silico annotation and sequence similarity, MF116383 was originally annotated as a probable cyclin-dependent serine/threonine-protein kinase. In this study, we confirmed that MF116383 limits virus infection, and carried out further bioinformatic and phylogenetic analyses to better characterize this important gene—which we renamed bee antiviral protein-1 (bap1). Phylogenetic analysis revealed that bap1 is taxonomically restricted to Hymenoptera and Blatella germanica (the German cockroach) and that the majority of bap1 amino acids are evolving under neutral selection. This is in-line with the results from structural prediction tools that indicate Bap1 is a highly disordered protein, which likely has relaxed structural constraints. Assessment of honey bee gene expression using a weighted gene correlation network analysis revealed that bap1 expression was highly correlated with several immune genes—most notably argonaute-2. The coexpression of bap1 and argonaute-2 was confirmed in an independent dataset that accounted for the effect of virus abundance. Together, these data demonstrate that bap1 is a taxonomically restricted, rapidly evolving antiviral immune gene. Future work will determine the role of bap1 in limiting replication of other viruses and examine the signal cascade responsible for regulating the expression of bap1 and other honey bee antiviral defense genes, including coexpressed ago-2, and determine whether the virus limiting function of bap1 acts in parallel or in tandem with RNAi.

scholarly journals Discovery and molecular characterisation of the first ambidensovirus in honey bees

2020 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 383
Author(s):  
Sabina OTT RUTAR ◽  
Dušan KORDIŠ
Keyword(s):  
Honey Bee ◽  
Honey Bees ◽  
Pesticide Exposure ◽  
Habitat Degradation ◽  
Southern China ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Apis Cerana ◽  
Genome Structure ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Ssdna Viruses

Honey bees play a critical role in global food production as pollinators of numerous crops. Several stressors cause declines in populations of managed and wild bee species, such as habitat degradation, pesticide exposure and pathogens. Viruses act as key stressors and can infect a wide range of species. The majority of honey bee-infecting viruses are RNA viruses of the Picornavirales order. Although some ssDNA viruses are common in insects, such as densoviruses, they have not yet been found in honey bees. Densoviruses were however found in bumblebees and ants. Here, we show that densoviruses are indeed present in the transcriptome of the eastern honey bee (<em>Apis cerana</em>) from southern China. On the basis of non-structural and structural transcripts, we inferred the genome structure of the Apis densovirus. Phylogenetic analysis has shown that this novel Apis densovirus belongs to the <em>Scindoambidensovirus</em> genus in the Densovirinae subfamily. Apis densovirus possesses ambisense genome organisation and encodes three non-structural proteins and a split VP (capsid) protein. The availability of a nearly complete Apis densovirus genome may enable the analysis of its potential pathogenic impact on honey bees. Our findings can thus guide further research into the densoviruses in honey bees and bumblebees.

Survey of feral honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies for Nosema apis in Western Australia

2007 ◽  
Vol 47 (7) ◽  
pp. 883 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Manning ◽  
Kate Lancaster ◽  
April Rutkay ◽  
Linda Eaton
Keyword(s):  
Apis Mellifera ◽  
Honey Bee ◽  
Western Australia ◽  
Honey Bees ◽  
Nosema Apis ◽  
The South ◽  
South West ◽  
Feral Populations ◽  
Significant Difference

The parasite, Nosema apis, was found to be widespread among feral populations of honey bees (Apis mellifera) in the south-west of Western Australia. The location, month of collection and whether the feral colony was enclosed in an object or exposed to the environment, all affected the presence and severity of infection. There was no significant difference in the probability of infection between managed and feral bees. However, when infected by N. apis, managed bees appeared to have a greater severity of the infection.

scholarly journals The Honey Bee: An Active Biosampler of Environmental Pollution and a Possible Warning Biomarker for Human Health

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (14) ◽  
pp. 6481
Author(s):  
Marianna Martinello ◽  
Chiara Manzinello ◽  
Nicoletta Dainese ◽  
Ilenia Giuliato ◽  
Albino Gallina ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Health ◽  
Honey Bee ◽  
Honey Bees ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
Close Correlation ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Guidelines ◽  
Pesticide Pollution ◽  
Tandem Mass Spectrometric ◽  
Active Substances

Member states of the European Union are required to ensure the initiation of monitoring programs to verify honey bee exposure to pesticides, where and as appropriate. Based on 620 samples of dead honey bees—42 of pollen, 183 of honey and 32 of vegetables—we highlighted the presence, as analyzed by liquid and gas chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometric detection, of many active substances, mainly tau-fluvalinate, piperonyl butoxide, chlorpyrifos and chlorpyrifos-methyl, permethrin and imidacloprid. Among the active substances found in analyzed matrices linked to honey bee killing incidents, 38 belong to hazard classes I and II, as methiocarb, methomyl, chlorpyrifos, cypermethrin and permethrin, thus representing a potential risk for human health. We have shown that, at different times between 2015 and 2020, during implementation of the Italian national guidelines for managing reports of bee colony mortality or depopulation associated with pesticide use, pesticide pollution events occurred that could raise concern for human health. Competent authorities could, as part of a One Health approach, exploit the information provided by existing reporting programs on honey bees and their products, in view of the close correlation to human health, animal health and ecosystem health.

scholarly journals Beehive Products as Antibacterial Agents: A Review

Antibiotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 717
Author(s):  
Rita Abou Nader ◽  
Rawan Mackieh ◽  
Rim Wehbe ◽  
Dany El El Obeid ◽  
Jean Marc Sabatier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Antibacterial Activity ◽  
Honey Bee ◽  
Antibacterial Agents ◽  
Royal Jelly ◽  
Biological Activities ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Bee Venom ◽  
Bacterial Strains ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Life Threatening

Honeybees are one of the most marvelous and economically beneficial insects. As pollinators, they play a vital role in every aspect of the ecosystem. Beehive products have been used for thousands of years in many cultures for the treatment of various diseases. Their healing properties have been documented in many religious texts like the Noble Quran and the Holy Bible. Honey, bee venom, propolis, pollen and royal jelly all demonstrated a richness in their bioactive compounds which make them effective against a variety of bacterial strains. Furthermore, many studies showed that honey and bee venom work as powerful antibacterial agents against a wide range of bacteria including life-threatening bacteria. Several reports documented the biological activities of honeybee products but none of them emphasized on the antibacterial activity of all beehive products. Therefore, this review aims to highlight the antibacterial activity of honey, bee venom, propolis, pollen and royal jelly, that are produced by honeybees.

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