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Article
Intensively Cultivated Landscape and Varroa Mite Infestation Are Associated with Reduced Honey Bee Nutritional State
PloS ONE
  • Adam G. Dolezal, Iowa State University
  • Jimena Carrillo-Tripp, Iowa State University
  • W. Allen Miller, Iowa State University
  • Bryony C. Bonning, Iowa State University
  • Amy L. Toth, Iowa State University
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
1-1-2016
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0153531
Abstract

As key pollinators, honey bees are crucial to many natural and agricultural ecosystems. An important factor in the health of honey bees is the availability of diverse floral resources. However, in many parts of the world, high-intensity agriculture could result in a reduction in honey bee forage. Previous studies have investigated how the landscape surrounding honey bee hives affects some aspects of honey bee health, but to our knowledge there have been no investigations of the effects of intensively cultivated landscapes on indicators of individual bee health such as nutritional physiology and pathogen loads. Furthermore, agricultural landscapes in different regions vary greatly in forage and land management, indicating a need for additional information on the relationship between honey bee health and landscape cultivation. Here, we add to this growing body of information by investigating differences in nutritional physiology between honey bees kept in areas of comparatively low and high cultivation in an area generally high agricultural intensity in the Midwestern United States. We focused on bees collected directly before winter, because overwintering stress poses one of the most serious problems for honey bees in temperate climates. We found that honey bees kept in areas of lower cultivation exhibited higher lipid levels than those kept in areas of high cultivation, but this effect was observed only in colonies that were free of Varroa mites. Furthermore, we found that the presence of mites was associated with lower lipid levels and higher titers of deformed wing virus (DWV), as well as a non-significant trend towards higher overwinter losses. Overall, these results show that mite infestation interacts with landscape, obscuring the effects of landscape alone and suggesting that the benefits of improved foraging landscape could be lost without adequate control of mite infestations.

Comments

This article is published as Dolezal, Adam G., Jimena Carrillo-Tripp, W. Allen Miller, Bryony C. Bonning, and Amy L. Toth. "Intensively cultivated landscape and varroa mite infestation are associated with reduced honey bee nutritional state." PloS one 11, no. 4 (2016): e0153531. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0153531. Posted with permission.

Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Copyright Owner
Dolezal et al.
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Citation Information
Adam G. Dolezal, Jimena Carrillo-Tripp, W. Allen Miller, Bryony C. Bonning, et al.. "Intensively Cultivated Landscape and Varroa Mite Infestation Are Associated with Reduced Honey Bee Nutritional State" PloS ONE Vol. 11 Iss. 4 (2016) p. e0153531
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/amy-toth/22/