Does Flower Morphology affect Honey Bee Preference?

Considering honey bee populations are at threat of declining. Flower preference is important to understand how we can attempt to preserve their habitats. The difference in abundance and time spent on composite vs non composite flowers is important to know in order to conserve habitats, and since bees are important for helping flowers and plants reproduce. Will composite flowers have more honey bees than non composite flowers? Composite flowers had significantly more honey bees than non composite flowers and the honey bees tended to stay longer as well. With more knowledge on flower preference we can take steps to restore habitats for honey bees, and improve agriculture. The purpose of this research is to gain a better understanding of flower preference in honey bees in order to maintain their habitats

Knowing the honey bee : a multispecies ethnography : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Multispecies scholarship argues that the non-human has been relegated to the background of discussions about who and what inhabits and shapes the world. This thesis engages with this discussion as an experimental multispecies ethnography with honey bees in Manawatu, New Zealand. I aim to centre the honey bee in ethnography through engagement in the practice of fieldwork as well as the representation of the findings of this engagement. The honey bee is commonly known as an introduced, domesticated species, kept by humans in beehives in apiculture. This conceals the agency of the honey bee, rendering it passive, productive and compliant to the desires of humans, or in need of human intervention for survival. To view the agency of the bee I undertook embodied, performative ethnography, interviewing beekeepers and becoming one myself. My methodology, which was shaped by the bee, traced the networks that honey bees were enrolled in. Encounters were awkward, one-sided, and sometimes dangerous. The representation of honey bees demands an approach which attends to multiple, distinct accounts of honey bee worlds, because the bee is a lively agent, contributing to, experiencing, and communicating about the multiple networks in which it is engaged. As such, the findings of this thesis are presented in three accounts of encounters with honey bees. These accounts are distinct, capturing the honey bee in different networks, but are also distinct in their narrative styles, progressing from a description of honey networks in the spirit of Actor-Networks, to writing with honey bee narrator in poetry. Ethnographic representation is inevitably partial and an act of imagination. However, becoming sensitive to the ‘bee-ness’ of the bee; the waggle, hum and sting, and employing narrative inspired by the multisensory apiary, in other words, shaping representation with honey bees in mind, is an act of privileging honey bees in writing, and exploring what more can be said of, and with, the bee

Distribution and transmission of American foulbrood in honey bees

The distribution of Paenibacillus larvae spores, the causative agent of American foulbrood, was studied on three different levels in the honey bee system; the apiary level, the colony level and the individual honey bee level. The increased understanding of spore distribution has been used to give recommendations regarding sampling of adult honey bees. The vertical transmission of P. larvae spores through natural swarms has been described for the first time and artificial swarming as a method for control of American foulbrood have been evaluated. The results demonstrated that there is no practical difference in spore load between supers and brood chambers, and that the spore load in samples of adult honey bees on the different levels correspond to the clinical disease status of the colony. The study on individual bees showed that spores are unequally distributed among the bees and that as more bees get contaminated each positive bee also contains more spores. This may present a problem when sampling from colonies with low levels of clinical disease, although the study on colony and apiary level showed no false negatives. A model for calculating the number of bees that needs to be sampled to detect P. larvae in a composite sample of adult bees, given certain detection levels and proportions of positive honey bees in the sample, was developed The swarm study demonstrated vertical transmission of P. larvae spores. Furthermore, the artificial swarm study showed that single and double shaking are equally effective treatment methods, and that the original disease status is of little importance for the spore load decrease

Does the waggle dance help honey bees to forage at greater distances than expected for their body size?

A honey bee colony has been likened to an oil company. Some members of the company or colony prospect for valuable liquid resources. When these are discovered other group members can be recruited to exploit the resource. The recruitment of nestmates to a specific location where there is a patch of flowers should change the economics of scouting, that is, the search for new resource patches. In particular, communication is predicted to make scouting at longer distances worthwhile because a profitable resource patch, once discovered, will enhance the foraging not only of the discoverer but also of nestmates that can be directed to the patch. By virtue of having large colonies and dance communication, honey bees are predicted to be able to profitably scout, and hence forage, at greater distances from the nest than either solitary bees or social bees without communication. We test this hypothesis by first examining existing data on foraging distance to evaluate whether honey bees do indeed forage at greater distances than other bees given their body size. Second, we present a simple cost-benefit analysis of scouting which indicates that communication causes longer range scouting to be more profitable. Overall, our analyses are supportive, but not conclusive, that honey bees forage further than would be expected given their size and that the waggle dance is a cause of the honey bee's exceptional foraging range

Orientation of Demagnetized Bees

The orientation of honey bee dances is affected by the earth's magnetic field. Honey bees possess localized, well-oriented, stable and superparamagnetic domains of magnetite. Four lines of evidence suggest that the superparamagnetic domains of bees are more likely to be involved in magnetic field detectors than the stable domains. (1) Although the stable domains vary widely in size and number between bees, approximately 2×10^8 superparamagnetic domains are found reliably in all bees, and are restricted to there latively narrow size range of 300–350 Å. This suggests that the superparamagnetic domains are more likely to have a biological function. (2) Behavioural observations of dances in null fields are difficult to reconcile with astable-domain detector but are clearly predicted by many superparamagnetic detector models. (3) When honey bees are demagnetized, their ability to orient to the earth's field is unaffected. This suggests that the detector either utilizes the super paramagnetic domains or depends on aligned anisotropic stable domains processed without regard to magneticpolarity. (4) Bees that have only superparamagnetic domains are able nevertheless to orient to the earth's magnetic field, a phenomenon which indicates that permanent domains may not be required for detection

Viral epidemiology of the adult Apis Mellifera infested by the Varroa destructor mite

The ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor has become one of the major worldwide threats for apiculture. Varroa destructor attacks the honey bee Apis mellifera weakening its host by sucking hemolymph. However, the damage to bee colonies is not strictly related to the parasitic action of the mite but it derives, above all, from its action as vector increasing the trasmission of many viral diseases such as acute paralysis (ABPV) and deformed wing viruses (DWV), that are considered among the main causes of CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder). In this work we discuss an SI model that describes how the presence of the mite affects the epidemiology of these viruses on adult bees. We characterize the system behavior, establishing that ultimately either only healthy bees survive, or the disease becomes endemic and mites are wiped out. Another dangerous alternative is the Varroa invasion scenario with the extinction of healthy bees. The final possible configuration is the coexistence equilibrium in which honey bees share their infected hive with mites. The analysis is in line with some observed facts in natural honey bee colonies. Namely, these diseases are endemic. Further, if the mite population is present, necessarily the viral infection occurs. The findings of this study indicate that a low horizontal transmission rate of the virus among honey bees in beehives will help in protecting bee colonies from Varroa infestation and viral epidemics

ANALYSIS OF THE POSSIBILITY OF UTALIZATION OF HONEY BEES IN EXPLOSIVE DETECTION

The fact that honey bees can detect explosive is widely known since late ’90, particularly when US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) solicited in 1999 proposals on Control led Biological and Biomimetic Systems. The honey of honey bees was known and approved in Croatia in 1994, 1997, 1999, 2002, as the sensitive indicator of the nuclear pollution (after Chernobyl). The application of the honey bees for the detection of the explosive and the land mines was treated in several scientific research and development projects. There are two main aspects of the application of the honey bees: biological and technical. The biological aspects are among others, the conditioning, training of honey bees, and assessment of their sensitivity for the various explosives and methods of their application and will not be considered. In this paper we consider technical aspects regarding the application of the honey bees for explosive and landmine detection, particularly methods, techniques and technologies of gathering data and information from honey bees smelling the explosive. For the detection of the honey bees over explosive samples were used several methods and techniques: locating the honey bees by lidar, locating the honey bee caring the microwave dipole and detecting the third harmonic of the radar waves, detecting honey bees by spectral features. This technique is very complicated and alternative approach was researched and approved in Croatia for assessment of the bees’ distribution over wide area: detecting the honey bees from air by electro optical sensors, using long wave thermal camera and digital image processing. Third direction of research and development is aimed for the handheld sensor for detection of the explosive and one system is available (VASOR136)

The impact of honey bees on montane ecosystems within Tongariro National Park : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Ecology at Massey University

A study of the effects of honey bees on montane ecosystems was conducted during the summers of 1993/1994 and 1994/1995 at Tongariro National Park. Three possible effects of the introduced honey bee were examined. The primary aims of the study were to identity areas with and without honey bees and to identify differences in the pollination success of a weed species, heather (Calluna vugaris) and a native species, the New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax) under different pollinator regimes, and to examine differences in the composition of native pollinator communities in these different bee areas. The impact of honey bees on the reproductive success of heather, an important weed species in Tongariro National Park was examined over two flowering seasons. Insect visitation rates on heather flowers were low at each of the four study sites. Bagging plants to exclude insect flower visitors had little effect on female fitness. The potential of other pollen vectors, wind and thrips, as pollinators of heather was also examined. Both were determined to have a negative effect on several measures of female success, including pollen deposition, pollen tube formation, and pollination levels. However it appears that none of the pollen vectors (honey bees, wind or thrips) significantly effect the overall fitness of heather in terms of the viable seed produced. The second part of the study examined the impact of honey bees on the pollination systems of a native plant species. Flax is thought to be predominantly bird pollinated, however, the floral resources are also utilised by a variety of native and introduced insect species. At some sites birds were either not present or rarely used the flowers. Seed set in flax was highest in heavily bird pollinated sites. The results also suggest, however, that flax has a flexible pollinating system that enables it to maintain a range of fruit and seed set levels under the different pollintor regimes. The abundance and diversity of insect flower visitors on manuka and Hebe stricta, two common subalpine shrubs, was highly variable between sites, and between observation periods. Some of this variation may be ascribed to differences in the weather or to altitude. However, I have shown that the abundance and diversity of diptera appears to be strongly influenced by levels of honey bee activity. This indicates that honey bees do play a role in determining the structure of pollinator communities and may be displacing a significant component of the native pollinating fauna

Unraveling honey bee–varroa destructor interaction: multiple factors involved in differential resistance between two uruguayan populations

The ectoparasite Varroa destructor is the greatest biotic threat of honey bees Apis mellifera in vast regions of the world. Recently, the study of natural mite-resistant populations has gained much interest to understand the action of natural selection on the mechanisms that limit the mite population. In this study, the components of the A. mellifera–V. destructor relationship were thoroughly examined and compared in resistant and susceptible honey bee populations from two regions of Uruguay. Mite-resistant honey bees have greater behavioral resistance (hygienic and grooming behaviors) than susceptible honey bees. At the end of the summer, resistant honey bees had fewer mites and a lower deformed wing virus (DWV) viral load than susceptible honey bees. DWV variant A was the only detected variant in honey bees and mites. Molecular analysis by Short Tandem Repeat showed that resistant honey bees were Africanized (A. m. scutellata hybrids), whereas susceptible honey bees were closer to European subspecies. Furthermore, significant genetic differentiation was also found between the mite populations. The obtained results show that the natural resistance of honey bees to V. destructor in Uruguay depends on several factors and that the genetic variants of both organisms can play a relevant rol