DIVERSITY OF THE CLOSED-NESTED HONEY BEES (APIDAE: APIS SPP.) AND THE TRADITIONAL HONEY COLLECTING AND BEEKEEPING IN FOUR ISLANDS OF INDONESIA

The closed-nested honey bees are an important group that has been successfully bred traditionally and in a modern way. The traditional honey beekeeping practices are still favorable by local people living near natural habitats. Many rural areas in Indonesia are well known as producers of honey from the traditional honey collecting and traditional honey beekeeping of the closed-nested honey bees. However, there is limited information on the diversity of the honey bees that had supported the honey productions and their traditional honey beekeeping. This research was to provide an overview of the diversity of the honey bee species that are used in the wild honey collecting and their traditional honey beekeeping in four selected study sites in the islands of Java, Bawean, Kalimantan, and Peleng. We recorded three species of closed-nested native honey bees in the traditional honey collecting and traditional honey beekeeping, namely Apis cerana, A. koschevnikovi, and A. nigrocincta. We observed that traditional beekeeping of A. cerana was carried out in Tasikmalaya and Bawean Island, and that of A. cerana and A. koschevnikovi were carried out in Kayan Hilir. On Peleng Island, people do not do beekeeping but collect honey directly from the forest. Honey collecting and beekeeping practices are related to changes in the seasons of the flowering period in their habitats. The knowledge of the flowering period is needed to know the seasonal movement of honey bees from forest to village and vice versa.

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Antiviral Activities of a Medicinal Plant Extract Against Sacbrood Virus in Honeybees

Virology Journal ◽

10.1186/s12985-021-01550-y ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 18 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Liping Sun ◽

Xueqi Zhang ◽

Shufa Xu ◽

Chunsheng Hou ◽

Jin Xu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Honey Bees ◽

Apis Cerana ◽

Larval Growth ◽

Antiviral Agent ◽

Antiviral Effect ◽

Absolute Quantification ◽

Chinese Medicinal Herb ◽

Sacbrood Virus ◽

Antiviral Activities ◽

Potential Strategy

Abstract Background Sacbrood is an infectious disease of the honey bee caused by Scbrood virus (SBV) which belongs to the family Iflaviridae and is especially lethal for Asian honeybee Apis cerana. Chinese Sacbrood virus (CSBV) is a geographic strain of SBV. Currently, there is a lack of an effective antiviral agent for controlling CSBV infection in honey bees. Methods Here, we explored the antiviral effect of a Chinese medicinal herb Radix isatidis on CSBV infection in A. cerana by inoculating the 3rd instar larvae with purified CSBV and treating the infected bee larvae with R. isatidis extract at the same time. The growth, development, and survival of larvae between the control and treatment groups were compared. The CSBV copy number at the 4th instar, 5th instar, and 6th instar larvae was measured by the absolute quantification PCR method. Results Bioassays revealed that R. isatidis extract significantly inhibited the replication of CSBV, mitigated the impacts of CSBV on larval growth and development, reduced the mortality of CSBV-infected A. cerana larvae, and modulated the expression of immune transcripts in infected bees. Conclusion Although the mechanism underlying the inhibition of CSBV replication by the medicine plant will require further investigation, this study demonstrated the antiviral activity of R. isatidis extract and provides a potential strategy for controlling SBV infection in honey bees.

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Are Honey Bees at Risk from Microplastics?

Toxics ◽

10.3390/toxics9050109 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 (5) ◽

pp. 109

Author(s):

Yahya Al Naggar ◽

Markus Brinkmann ◽

Christie M. Sayes ◽

Saad N. AL-Kahtani ◽

Showket A. Dar ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Gene Expression ◽

Gut Microbiota ◽

Honey Bees ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Aquatic Systems ◽

Wide Spread ◽

Negative Effects ◽

Potential Threat ◽

Persistent Pollutants ◽

Research Questions

Microplastics (MPs) are ubiquitous and persistent pollutants, and have been detected in a wide variety of media, from soils to aquatic systems. MPs, consisting primarily of polyethylene, polypropylene, and polyacrylamide polymers, have recently been found in 12% of samples of honey collected in Ecuador. Recently, MPs have also been identified in honey bees collected from apiaries in Copenhagen, Denmark, as well as nearby semiurban and rural areas. Given these documented exposures, assessment of their effects is critical for understanding the risks of MP exposure to honey bees. Exposure to polystyrene (PS)-MPs decreased diversity of the honey bee gut microbiota, followed by changes in gene expression related to oxidative damage, detoxification, and immunity. As a result, the aim of this perspective was to investigate whether wide-spread prevalence of MPs might have unintended negative effects on health and fitness of honey bees, as well as to draw the scientific community’s attention to the possible risks of MPs to the fitness of honey bees. Several research questions must be answered before MPs can be considered a potential threat to bees.

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Landscape structure affects the sunflower visiting frequency of insect pollinators

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-87650-9 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Károly Lajos ◽

Ferenc Samu ◽

Áron Domonkos Bihaly ◽

Dávid Fülöp ◽

Miklós Sárospataki

Keyword(s):

Landscape Structure ◽

Honey Bees ◽

Agricultural Landscape ◽

Edge Density ◽

Wild Bees ◽

Natural Habitats ◽

Mass Flowering ◽

Positive Effects ◽

Pollinator Community ◽

Foraging Ranges

AbstractMass-flowering crop monocultures, like sunflower, cannot harbour a permanent pollinator community. Their pollination is best secured if both managed honey bees and wild pollinators are present in the agricultural landscape. Semi-natural habitats are known to be the main foraging and nesting areas of wild pollinators, thus benefiting their populations, whereas crops flowering simultaneously may competitively dilute pollinator densities. In our study we asked how landscape structure affects major pollinator groups’ visiting frequency on 36 focal sunflower fields, hypothesising that herbaceous semi-natural (hSNH) and sunflower patches in the landscape neighbourhood will have a scale-dependent effect. We found that an increasing area and/or dispersion of hSNH areas enhanced the visitation of all pollinator groups. These positive effects were scale-dependent and corresponded well with the foraging ranges of the observed bee pollinators. In contrast, an increasing edge density of neighbouring sunflower fields resulted in considerably lower visiting frequencies of wild bees. Our results clearly indicate that the pollination of sunflower is dependent on the composition and configuration of the agricultural landscape. We conclude that an optimization of the pollination can be achieved if sufficient amount of hSNH areas with good dispersion are provided and mass flowering crops do not over-dominate the agricultural landscape.

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Comparing Wetland Ecosystems Service Provision under Different Management Approaches: Two Cases Study of Tianfu Wetland and Nansha Wetland in China

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13168710 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (16) ◽

pp. 8710

Author(s):

Yuchao Zhang ◽

Steven Loiselle ◽

Yimo Zhang ◽

Qian Wang ◽

Xia Sun ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Water Quality ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Wetland Management ◽

Nutrient Retention ◽

Limited Information ◽

Urban Centers ◽

Wetland Ecosystems ◽

Fundamental Information ◽

Management Approaches ◽

Study Sites

The largest blue-green infrastructures in industrialized, urbanized and developed regions in China are often multiuse wetlands, located just outside growing urban centers. These areas have multiple development pressures while providing environmental, economic, and social benefits to the local and regional populations. Given the limited information available about the tradeoffs in ecosystem services with respect to competing wetland uses, wetland managers and provincial decision makers face challenges in regulating the use of these important landscapes. In the present study, measurements made by citizen scientists were used to support a comparative study of water quality and wetland functions in two large multiuse wetlands, comparing areas of natural wetland vegetation, tourism-based wetland management and wetland agriculture. The study sites, the Nansha and Tianfu wetlands, are located in two of the most urbanized areas of China: the lower Yangtze River and Pearl River catchments, respectively. Our results indicated that the capacity of wetlands to mitigate water quality is closely related to the quality of the surrounding waters and hydrological conditions. Agricultural areas in both wetlands provided the lowest sediment and nutrient retention. The results show that the delivery of supporting ecosystem services is strongly influenced by the location and use of the wetland. Furthermore, we show that citizen scientist-acquired data can provide fundamental information on quantifying these ecosystem services, providing needed information to wetland park managers and provincial wetland administrators.

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Numerical assessment in the wild: insights from social carnivores

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2016.0508 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 373 (1740) ◽

pp. 20160508 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Sarah Benson-Amram ◽

Geoff Gilfillan ◽

Karen McComb

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Future Research ◽

Wild Animals ◽

Playback Experiments ◽

Natural Habitats ◽

Numerical Assessment ◽

Individual Discrimination ◽

In Captivity ◽

Assessment Skills ◽

In The Wild

Playback experiments have proved to be a useful tool to investigate the extent to which wild animals understand numerical concepts and the factors that play into their decisions to respond to different numbers of vocalizing conspecifics. In particular, playback experiments have broadened our understanding of the cognitive abilities of historically understudied species that are challenging to test in the traditional laboratory, such as members of the Order Carnivora. Additionally, playback experiments allow us to assess the importance of numerical information versus other ecologically important variables when animals are making adaptive decisions in their natural habitats. Here, we begin by reviewing what we know about quantity discrimination in carnivores from studies conducted in captivity. We then review a series of playback experiments conducted with wild social carnivores, including African lions, spotted hyenas and wolves, which demonstrate that these animals can assess the number of conspecifics calling and respond based on numerical advantage. We discuss how the wild studies complement those conducted in captivity and allow us to gain insights into why wild animals may not always respond based solely on differences in quantity. We then consider the key roles that individual discrimination and cross-modal recognition play in the ability of animals to assess the number of conspecifics vocalizing nearby. Finally, we explore new directions for future research in this area, highlighting in particular the need for further work on the cognitive basis of numerical assessment skills and experimental paradigms that can be effective in both captive and wild settings. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The origins of numerical abilities’.

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Hypopharyngeal Gland Activity in Task-Specific Workers Under Brood and Broodless Conditions in Apis Cerana Indica (Fab.)

Journal of Apicultural Science ◽

10.2478/jas-2014-0022 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 58 (2) ◽

pp. 59-70 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Seydur Rahman ◽

Ibamelaker Thangkhiew ◽

Sudhanya R. Hajong

Keyword(s):

Electron Microscopy ◽

Protein Synthesis ◽

Honey Bees ◽

Protein Concentration ◽

Apis Cerana ◽

Larval Rearing ◽

Hypopharyngeal Gland ◽

Head Weight ◽

Apis Cerana Indica ◽

Scanning Electron

Abstract The hypopharyngeal gland (HPG) is the principal organ of protein synthesis in honey bees. It is involved in larval rearing. We examined the fresh head weight, HPG acini diameter, and HPG protein content in worker bees engaged in different tasks and under brood and broodless conditions. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that the HPG acini diameter of worker bees was related to their task. The highest HPG volume was found in nurse bees, and the volume regressed when the task changed from guarding to foraging. The fresh head weight was positively correlated with HPG acini diameter. Although, there was no positive correlation between HPG acini diameter and protein concentration, the glandular protein concentration increased progressively in nurse bees and declined in guard and forager bees. Histochemistry revealed similar results. Despite displaying significantly larger glands, guard bee protein secretion was similar to that of the foragers. Brooding had a significant effect on HPG activity. Only worker bees from the colony with an intact brood showed elevated rates of protein synthesis; thus, it is possible that a signal was emitted by the brood, which stimulated protein synthesis in the HPG. However, the size of the HPG was similar in both brood and broodless conditions.

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Behavioral responses of honey bees, Apis cerana and Apis mellifera, to Vespa mandarinia marking and alarm pheromones

Journal of Apicultural Research ◽

10.1080/00218839.2018.1494917 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 58 (1) ◽

pp. 141-148 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Beverly McClenaghan ◽

Marcel Schlaf ◽

Megan Geddes ◽

Joshua Mazza ◽

Grace Pitman ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Apis Mellifera ◽

Honey Bees ◽

Apis Cerana ◽

Behavioral Responses ◽

Alarm Pheromones

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Sexual exploitation of adolescent students in Tanzania: Implication for social services

International Social Work ◽

10.1177/0020872818774111 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 62 (3) ◽

pp. 1104-1116 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Budeba Petro Mlyakado ◽

Jessica Chi-Mei Li

Keyword(s):

Secondary School ◽

Social Services ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Secondary School Students ◽

Sexual Exploitation ◽

Limited Information ◽

School Students ◽

Adolescent Students ◽

Using Data ◽

Collaborative Efforts

A considerable empirical research has been conducted on sexual exploitation of children and adolescents; however, limited information is available in developing countries. This study describes and discusses the prevalence, nature and characteristics of sexual exploitation of adolescents using data collected from 1116 secondary school students in Tanzania. Results indicate that 21 percent of the surveyed adolescent students had had at least one experience of sexual exploitation. Being a female, living in rural areas and being aged above 15 years were associated with high risk of sexual exploitation. This study underscores gender- and locality-specific social work interventional requirements, with emphasis on interdisciplinary collaborative efforts.

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The impact of temperature and precipitation changes on honey bees (Apis mellifera) in the Aegean region under future climate scenarios

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5579 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Tim van der Schriek ◽

Gianna Kitsara ◽

Konstantinos V. Varotsos ◽

Christos Giannakopoulos

Keyword(s):

Honey Bees ◽

Mortality Rates ◽

Flowering Period ◽

Extreme Temperatures ◽

Foraging Activity ◽

Colony Losses ◽

Aegean Region ◽

Ambient Temperatures ◽

Temperature And Precipitation ◽

Heat Extremes

The Aegean region (Greece) preserves a wide genetic diversity amongst the honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) of its many islands and supports an important bee keeping industry. However, sector-specific regional impact studies, based on the latest high-resolution regional climate models (RCMs), are urgently required for developing successful local adaptation strategies for beekeeping and to preserve biodiversity under future climate change scenarios.We evaluated direct climate change impacts on honey bees in the Aegean region through novel threshold temperature and precipitation indices, linked to critical bee behavior and colony mortality. There are strong relationships between ambient temperature and key bee colony behavior such as, for example, nest thermo-humidity regulation, annual population variability and foraging. Additionally, dry conditions and heatwaves have been empirically linked to declines in colony food stores and increased colony mortality rates. Impact projections used simulated temperature and precipitation data from an ensemble of seven RCMs under the medium (RCP4.5) and high (RCP8.5) emission scenarios for the control- (1971-2000), near future- (2031-2060) and distant future (2071-2100) periods. Simulated data were bias-adjusted using the long-term meteorological record of Naxos Island (central Aegean).Overheating in summer constitutes a major challenge to nest temperature regulation. Thermal and humidity conditions are well-regulated in bee nests given their importance for colony health. Brood must remain at 33-36 oC and experience high relative humidity for proper development. Bees tend to start cooling nests when ambient temperatures are >25 oC. Evaporative cooling using water is of critical importance with temperatures above 35 oC and is remarkably effective in stabilising nest temperature at 36 oC, even as ambient temperatures are >60 oC. Thermoregulation is highly demanding, and brood is mainly reared during optimum periods with no/low need of regulation. Sustained high temperatures >40-45 oC cause significant colony losses. The highest foraging activity takes place in the temperature range from 12-25 oC, whereas there is no activity <7 oC and >43 oC. Winter colony mortality rates increase when the spring flowering period experiences very low rainfall and extreme temperatures.Future climatic change projections show significant increases in seasonal temperatures and days without precipitation, which will negatively affect the region&#8217;s bees. More frequent and severe heat-extremes will characterize seasons from spring to autumn, forcing bee colonies to cool their nests more intensively. Meanwhile, the availability of water and nectar (used for evaporative cooling) will decrease during extreme warm-dry events. The increase in heat extremes will likely lead to increased colony losses. Temperatures within the range for optimal foraging activity are less likely to occur during the flowering period. Finally, years with spring seasons characterized by very low rainfall and extreme temperatures will become more frequent in the future which may result in increased winter mortality rates.

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ALSIKE CLOVER POLLINATION BY HONEY BEES IN THE PEACE RIVER REGION

Canadian Journal of Plant Science ◽

10.4141/cjps59-069 ◽

1959 ◽

Vol 39 (4) ◽

pp. 505-511 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

P. Pankiw ◽

C. R. Elliott

Keyword(s):

Honey Bee ◽

Plant Species ◽

Honey Bees ◽

Climatic Conditions ◽

Bumble Bees ◽

Flowering Period ◽

Peace River ◽

River Region ◽

Native Pollinator ◽

Seed Yields

Pollination studies involving zero, one and three colonies of honey bees per acre, on commercial alsike clover fields ranging in size from 15 to 75 acres, were conducted in 1954, 1955, and 1957 in the Hinton Trail district of the Peace River Region of Alberta. These studies indicated that in large fields one colony of honey bees per acre is sufficient to pollinate alsike clover, consideration being given to competition of other crops and to the climatic conditions. The influence of competing crops was such that 65- to 75-acre fields, with one colony per acre, were similar in honey bee populations and seed production to 15- to 20-acre fields with three colonies per acre. Competing plant species accounted for 15 to 36 per cent of the pollen collected by honey bees. Fields with the higher populations of pollinators matured earlier than fields deficient in pollinators. A population of 3400 honey bees per acre (0.7 bee per sq. yd.) throughout the flowering period resulted in seed sets up to 82 per cent and seed yields to 375 lb. per acre. Check fields, where no honey bees were supplied, ranged in production from 29 lb. per acre, with a low native pollinator count, to 293 lb. where a pollinator equivalent of 1300 bumble bees per acre was observed. Bumble bees worked alsike clover at the rate of 28.6 florets per minute, as compared to 20.0 for leaf-cutter bees and 18.7 for honey bees.

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