Using Manual and Computer-Based Text-Mining to Uncover Research Trends for Apis mellifera

Abstract

Honey bee research is believed to be influenced dramatically by colony collapse disorder (CCD) and the sequenced genome release in 2006, but this assertion has never been tested. By employing text-mining approaches, research trends were tested by analyzing over 14,000 publications during the period of 1957 to 2017. Quantitatively, the data revealed an exponential growth until 2010 when the number of articles published per year ceased following the trend. Analysis of author-assigned keywords revealed that changes in keywords occurred roughly every decade with the most fundamental change in 1991–1992, instead of 2006. This change might be due to several factors including the research intensification on the Varroa mite. The genome release and CCD had quantitively only minor effects, mainly on honey bee health-related topics post-2006. Further analysis revealed that computational topic modeling can provide potentially hidden information and connections between some topics that might be ignored in author-assigned keywords.

Honey Bee Health

“…Factors associates with honey bee colony losses were reviewed by Hristov et al [ 1 ], and Amiri et al analysed the interest in honey bee research [ 2 ]. Donkersley et al report a One Health model to reverse honey bee decline [ 3 ].…”

Honey’s Antioxidant and Antimicrobial Properties: A Bibliometric Study

“…The list of the ten most productive countries includes countries from five continents. Asia had in total of 120 documents, namely: India (32), Turkey (31), Malaysia (30), and Saudi Arabia (27). Italy (28), Poland (28), and Spain (25) represented Europe with 81 records, while Egypt (21) was the only country from Africa.…”

“…The existing bibliometric studies, of which only three were conducted using the CSIRO database, investigated various topics around honey and bee products, such as the use of beekeeping products in medicine or the honey itself from 2011 to 2020, honey consumption, and the collapse phenomenon of bee colonies. Likewise, pesticide presence in bee products and honey, the mortality of bees, as well as issues of authenticity and the development of technological methods to determine the origin of honey were studied [9,[29][30][31][32][33]. From the above, it can be concluded that the antimicrobial action of honey combined with its antioxidant properties has yet to be extensively and scientifically studied over a long period.…”

Honey Bee Larval Hemolymph as a Source of Key Nutrients and Proteins Offers a Promising Medium for Varroa destructor Artificial Rearing

“…Because of its impact on the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera), beekeeping, and agriculture, the ectoparasite Varroa destructor is one of the main pests studied throughout the world [15][16][17]. Since it is an obligate parasite, it is only possible to isolate the mite from its host and to maintain it in the laboratory for limited periods.…”