Differing geographical distribution of honey bee pathogens in North-Europe : Distribution of four focal honey bee pathogens based on pathogen DNA detection in honey samples

Sammanfattning

The western honey bee (Apis millifera) is one of the most important animal pollinators globally. Pollination services of honey bees are of great importance to both agricultural and natural ecosystems. Honey bees may be subject to several different diseases, such as American Foulbrood, European Foulbrood, Chalkbrood and Stonebrood. These diseases all cause significant issues within apiculture, i.e. the practice of keeping honey bees. Diseases of honey bees cause great economical loss, loss of pollination services, bee products and are common issues within apiculture. The success of detecting disease by molecular methods is of great importance as it could be a great relief to apiculture and overall honey bee health to detect disease early, limit spread and treat symptoms. In this study the four focal diseases presence in honey was examined using two molecular methods, metabarcoding and metagenomics. Results showed that all four diseases could be detected in the sampled region of Northen Europe, and each disease had a different geographical spread than the others and showed no significant correlations of occurrence. Additionally, both molecular methods were able to detect disease presence but showed some variability in where diseases occurred geographically and how well each disease was detected. Since the diseases have such different geographical spreads, these results suggest that disease occurrence is not dependent on long distance spread. Further understanding of honey bee diseases is needed, but to further limit disease, molecular detection methods are viable options for detecting honey bee disease.