Poor Air Quality Is Linked to Stress in Honeybees and Can Be Compounded by the Presence of Disease.

Climate change-related extreme weather events have manifested in the western United States as warmer and drier conditions with an increased risk of wildfires. Honeybees, essential for crop pollination in California, are at the center of these extreme weather events. We associated the maximum daily temperature and air quality index values with the performance of colonies placed in wildfire-prone areas and determined the impact of these abiotic stressors on gene expression and histopathology.

A practical approach to the sampling, fixation, softening, and sectioning of whole honey bees for histologic evaluation.

The Western honey bee () is economically important as the primary managed pollinator of many agricultural crops and for the production of various hive-related commodities. Honey bees are not classically or thoroughly covered in veterinary pathology training programs. Given their unique anatomic and biological differences from the other species more traditionally evaluated by veterinary pathologists, establishing routine and consistent methods for processing samples for histology ensures accurate diagnostic and research conclusions.