Occurrence and genetic analysis of picorna-like viruses infecting worker bees of Apis mellifera L. populations in Devon, South West England

The German bee monitoring project: a long term study to understand periodically high winter losses of honey bee colonies

“…The rates of infection were consistent with other studies (Baker and Schroeder, 2008;Berenyi et al, 2006;Tentcheva et al, 2004). For detection of SBV again only RNA extracted from bees' heads has been used as opposed to whole bee extracts commonly used in the literature.…”

“…We therefore chose to diagnose DWV infections by using extracts from bee heads rather than from entire bees. Not surprisingly, we found a rather low rate of DWV positive colonies compared with previous studies (Baker and Schroeder, 2008;Berenyi et al, 2006;Tentcheva et al, 2004) ranging between 4.4% in autumn 2004 and 33.4% in autumn 2007. Statistically relating these data with the observed winter losses revealed a highly significant (P = 0.00001) negative effect of DWV infection (characterized by viral detection in 'head') in autumn on winter survival.…”

“…In the literature several studies determining the viral infection status of honey bee colonies can be found (Baker and Schroeder, 2008;Berenyi et al, 2006;Tentcheva et al, 2004). The general picture emerging from these studies is that DWV is the most prevalent virus in Europe with more than 90% of the analyzed colonies being infected.…”

Seasonal prevalence of pathogens and parasites in the savannah honeybee (Apis mellifera scutellata)

“…The absence of DWV from the honeybee and Varroa mite samples collected during this study was unexpected given its high prevalence in apiaries around the world (Allen and Ball, 1996;Baker and Schroeder, 2008;Berényi et al, 2006;Chen and Siede, 2007;Ellis and Munn, 2005;Martin et al, 1998;Tentcheva et al, 2004a) and the close association of DWV with Varroa mites (Bailey and Ball, 1991;Bowen-Walker et al, 1999;Dainat et al, 2012a;Gisder et al, 2009;Martin et al, 2012;Yang and CoxFoster, 2005;Yue and Genersch, 2005). Recently, DWV was also found to be absent from wild A. m. scutellata drones collected in a South African Nature Reserve and honeybee samples from Uganda (Kajobe et al, 2010).…”

Deformed Wing Virus Implicated in Overwintering Honeybee Colony Losses

“…This does not occur via the previously described routes of deformed wing abnormalities and overpowering varroa mite infestations but, rather, more likely by a subtle and persistent alteration in the behavior of key members within the colony. Furthermore, since DWVs have an underlying breadth of genetic diversity (8), it is likely that certain genotypes or variants could be responsible for these overwintering colony losses. We therefore propose that analysis of DWV load in overwintering asymptomatic honeybees is an important diagnostic parameter for assessing whether a colony will persist into the following year.…”