The worldwide health status of honey bees

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).…”

“…However, information on the risk bee lice pose to colonies is contradictory (Crane, 1990;Gidey et al, 2012;Zaitoun and Al-Ghzawi, 2008) and requires further investigation. Bee lice have previously been reported in many countries around the world (Ellis and Munn, 2005), but have recently become less common in countries where chemicals are used to treat Varroa mites. Therefore, the African continent might serve as a refuge for this species, because chemical treatments are generally not used to control Varroa mites in African honeybee colonies.…”

“…Indeed, without the negative effect of this virus on their immune systems (Nazzi et al, 2012;Yang and Cox-Foster, 2005), African honeybees might be in a better position to withstand the negative effects of other pathogens and parasites. However, Africanized honeybees, that are genetically very similar to their African ancestors, (Kraus et al, 2007;Moritz et al, 2005;Schneider et al, 2004) are infected with DWV (Calderón et al, 2003;Ellis and Munn, 2005;Teixeira et al, 2008), but have not experienced large colony losses (Neumann and Carreck, 2010). This suggests that there might also be a genetic component that provides African and Africanized honeybees with a greater level of tolerance to pathogens and parasites, e.g.…”

“…The majority of pathogens and parasites affecting honeybees have an almost worldwide distribution (Allen and Ball, 1996;Bailey and Ball, 1991;Ellis and Munn, 2005). However, the health status of honeybees in Africa is poorly characterized (Hepburn and Radloff, 1998;Dietemann et al, 2009).…”

“…In contrast to many counties around the world, South Africa has not yet experienced the devastating effects of the ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor and honeybee pathogens (Allsopp, 2006;Neumann and Carreck, 2010), despite average losses of between 20% and 29% in the years . This might be due to a lack of continuous surveys investigating pathogen presence (Allen and Ball, 1996;Allsopp, 2006;Buys, 1982;Davison et al, 1999;Ellis and Munn, 2005;Hepburn and Radloff, 1998) or as a result of honeybees that are able to withstand the negative effects of these pathogens , Human et al, 2011.…”