EVALUATION OF ETHOLOGICAL AND PRODUCTION TRAITS IN VARIOUS GENOTYPES OF MACEDONIAN HONEY BEE SUBSPECIES

The honey bee colonony is a complex society which has a wide range of behaviors. The mostimportant are swarming, colony defense and hygienic behavior. These ethological traits have animpact on the honey yields and are of significant interests of the honey bee breeders. Therefore theethological characteristics are recognized in selection and breeding programs. According to thebreeding programs selection is directed to reduction of swarming and colony defense behavior andincreased expression of hygienic behavior. The aim of this research was to evaluate thesecharacteristics in 100 honey bee colonies from four genotypes (A, B, C and D) of the autochthonoushoney bee population (Apis mellifera macedonica) in one of the registered honey bee queenbreeding stations, located in Ohrid region, during 2016.The research included: scoring of thedefensive and the swarming behavior of honey bee colonies according to four point system, testinghygienic behavior using Pin-test method and scoring according five point system as well asdetermining honey yield by weighing of extracted honey in kg per honey bee colony and scoring thehoney yield according to the four point system. The results did not show statistically significantdifferences concerning swarming behavior and honey yield between colonies from the fourgenotypes. The results have shown statistical significant differences in the average cleaning success(hygienic behavior) after 24 hours, between A and B (p=0.0096) genotypes, and in the defensivebehavior, between A and D (p=0.0166) and between C and D (p=0.0333) genotypes

АНАЛИЗА НА ЗАГУБИТЕ НА ПЧЕЛНИ СЕМЕЈСТВА ВО РЕПУБЛИКА МАКЕДОНИЈА ВО ЗИМСКИОТ ПЕРИОД 2012/2013

Со цел да се утврдат причините и обемот на загуби на пчелните семејства во периодот од септември 2012 до март 2013 година, анкетирани се 140 одгледувачи на пчели од 6 града во Република Македонија. Анкетниот прашалник содржеше 12 прашања кои се однесуваа на регионот на пчеларење, апитехниката и перцепцијата на одгледувачите на пчели во однос на причините за загубите на пчелни семејства. Најмали загуби на пчелни семејства се евидентирани во вардарскиот регион (1,2%), додека најголеми загуби во источниот регион (16,2%). Можните причини за загубите се дискутирани во трудот

HALYOMORPHA HALYS STÅL, 1855 (PENTATOMIDAE: HEMIPTERA) IN NORTH MACEDONIA

The invasive species Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB) H. halys is native for East Asia, and has been present in Europe since 2004. The first finding of the pest in North Macedonia was in 2018 (unpublished data), while the monitoring programme for this pest, supported by the company Socoterra, Bitola, started at 2020 and was carried out on 9 localities with pheromones for aggregation Pherocon – BMSB, Trécé.  According to the monitoring results based on caught adults, H. halys was well established in the urban area of Skopje and accidentally appeared in the urban part of Prilep in 2020 and Resen in 2022(western part of the NMK).  H. halys was also registered in the rural area nearby Skopje (v. Stajkovci) in 2020 and 2021, and close to Bitola (v. Alinci) in 2020. In 2022 the bug H. halys has shown higher level of spreading and was registered in v. Golemo Konjari near Prilep (western part) and v. Otosnica near Kriva Palanka (eastern part). The pest overwintered as an adult. Overwintered adults appeared at the end of April when they fed on different plants, copulated and laid eggs in May. The first larvae instar appears in the first decade of June. Larvae in different development stages were present until mid-September.  The adults of the new generation emerged at the beginning of August and stayed active until mid-October. In the researching period 2020-2022 there were registered damages on the persimmon and apple fruits, gathered from the orchard with mixed fruits in the locality Skopje-FASF

Direct Economic Impact Assessment of Winter Honeybee Colony Losses in Three European Countries

Honeybees are of great importance because of their role in pollination as well as for hive products. The population of managed colonies fluctuates over time, and recent monitoring reports show different levels of colony losses in many regions and countries. The cause of this kind of loss is a combination of various factors, such as the parasitic mite Varroa destructor, viruses, pesticides, management practices, climate change, and other stress factors. Having in mind that the economic aspect of honeybee colony losses has not been estimated, a pioneer effort was made for developing a methodology that estimates the economic impact of honeybee colony losses. Winter loss data was based on 2993 answers of the COLOSS standard questionnaire survey of honeybee winter colony losses for 2016/2017. In addition, market and financial data were used for each country. In a comparative analysis, an assessment on the economic impact of colony losses in Austria, Czechia, and Macedonia was made. The estimation considered the value of the colonies and the potential production losses of the lost colonies and of surviving but weak colonies. The direct economic impact of winter honeybee colony losses in 2016/2017 in Austria was estimated to be about 32 Mio; in Czechia, 21 Mio; and in Macedonia, 3 Mio. Economic impact reflects the different value levels in the three countries, national colony populations, and the magnitude of colony losses. This study also suggests that economic losses are much higher than the subsidies, which underlines the economic importance of honeybees for the agricultural sector

Authoritative subspecies diagnosis tool for European honey bees based on ancestryinformative SNPs

Background With numerous endemic subspecies representing four of its five evolutionary lineages, Europe holds a large fraction of Apis mellifera genetic diversity. This diversity and the natural distribution range have been altered by anthropogenic factors. The conservation of this natural heritage relies on the availability of accurate tools for subspecies diagnosis. Based on pool-sequence data from 2145 worker bees representing 22 populations sampled across Europe, we employed two highly discriminative approaches (PCA and F-ST) to select the most informative SNPs for ancestry inference. Results Using a supervised machine learning (ML) approach and a set of 3896 genotyped individuals, we could show that the 4094 selected single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) provide an accurate prediction of ancestry inference in European honey bees. The best ML model was Linear Support Vector Classifier (Linear SVC) which correctly assigned most individuals to one of the 14 subspecies or different genetic origins with a mean accuracy of 96.2% +/- 0.8 SD. A total of 3.8% of test individuals were misclassified, most probably due to limited differentiation between the subspecies caused by close geographical proximity, or human interference of genetic integrity of reference subspecies, or a combination thereof. Conclusions The diagnostic tool presented here will contribute to a sustainable conservation and support breeding activities in order to preserve the genetic heritage of European honey bees.The SmartBees project was funded by the European Commission under its FP7 KBBE programme (2013.1.3-02, SmartBees Grant Agreement number 613960) https://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7.MP was supported by a Basque Government grant (IT1233-19). The funders provided the financial support to the research, but had no role in the design of the study, analysis, interpretations of data and in writing the manuscript

Direct Economic Impact Assessment of Winter Honeybee Colony Losses in Three European Countries

Honeybees are of great importance because of their role in pollination as well as for hive products. The population of managed colonies fluctuates over time, and recent monitoring reports show different levels of colony losses in many regions and countries. The cause of this kind of loss is a combination of various factors, such as the parasitic mite Varroa destructor, viruses, pesticides, management practices, climate change, and other stress factors. Having in mind that the economic aspect of honeybee colony losses has not been estimated, a pioneer effort was made for developing a methodology that estimates the economic impact of honeybee colony losses. Winter loss data was based on 2993 answers of the COLOSS standard questionnaire survey of honeybee winter colony losses for 2016/2017. In addition, market and financial data were used for each country. In a comparative analysis, an assessment on the economic impact of colony losses in Austria, Czechia, and Macedonia was made. The estimation considered the value of the colonies and the potential production losses of the lost colonies and of surviving but weak colonies. The direct economic impact of winter honeybee colony losses in 2016/2017 in Austria was estimated to be about 32 Mio €; in Czechia, 21 Mio €; and in Macedonia, 3 Mio €. Economic impact reflects the different value levels in the three countries, national colony populations, and the magnitude of colony losses. This study also suggests that economic losses are much higher than the subsidies, which underlines the economic importance of honeybees for the agricultural sector

Preliminary Analysis of Loss Rates of Honey Bee Colonies During Winter 2015/16 from the Coloss Survey

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.WoSScopu