Adult females of Nasonia vitripennis inject a venomous mixture into its host flies prior to oviposition. Recently, the entire genome of this ectoparasitoid wasp was sequenced, enabling the identification of 79 venom proteins. The next challenge will be to unravel their specific functions, but based on homolog studies, some predictions already can be made. Parasitization has an enormous impact on hosts physiology of which five major effects are discussed in this review: the impact on immune responses, induction of developmental arrest, increases in lipid levels, apoptosis and nutrient releases. The value of deciphering this venom is also discussed.

A defining feature of social insects is the reproductive division of labour, in which workers usually forego all reproduction to help their mother queen to reproduce. However, little is known about the molecular basis of this spectacular form of altruism. Here, we compared gene expression patterns between nonreproductive, altruistic workers and reproductive, non-altruistic workers in queenless honeybee colonies using a whole-genome microarray analysis. Our results demonstrate massive differences in gene expression patterns between these two sets of workers, with a total of 1292 genes being differentially expressed. In nonreproductive workers, genes associated with energy metabolism and respiration, flight and foraging behaviour, detection of visible light, flight and heart muscle contraction and synaptic transmission were overexpressed relative to reproductive workers. This implies they probably had a higher whole-body energy metabolism and activity rate and were most likely actively foraging, whereas same-aged reproductive workers were not. This pattern is predicted from evolutionary theory, given that reproductive workers should be less willing to compromise their reproductive futures by carrying out high-risk tasks such as foraging or other energetically expensive tasks. By contrast, reproductive workers mainly overexpressed oogenesis-related genes compared to nonreproductive ones. With respect to key switches for ovary activation, several genes involved in steroid biosynthesis were upregulated in reproductive workers, as well as genes known to respond to queen and brood pheromones, genes involved in TOR and insulin signalling pathways and genes located within quantitative trait loci associated with reproductive capacity in honeybees. Overall, our results provide unique insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying alternative reproductive phenotypes in honeybee workers.

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In this short note we present comparable loss rates of honey bee colonies during winter 2015/16 from 29 countries, obtained with the COLOSS questionnaire. Altogether, we received valid answers from 19,952 beekeepers. These beekeepers collectively wintered 421,238 colonies, and reported 18,587 colonies with unsolvable queen problems and 32,048 dead colonies after winter. This gives an overall loss rate of 12.0% (95% confidence interval 11.8%-12.2%) during winter 2015/16, with marked differences among countries. Beekeepers in the present study assessed 7.6% (95% CI 7.4%-7.8%) of their colonies as dead or empty, and 4.4% (95% CI 4.3%-4.5%) as having unsolvable queen problems after winter. The overall analysis showed that small operations suffered higher losses than larger ones. A table with detailed results and a map showing response and relative risks at regional level are presented

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