Influence of virus abundances in donor colonies and nurse hives on queens of during the rearing process.

Background: Honeybees are one of the three most important animals for mankind. In order to be safe and increase number of bee colonies for pollination, the breeding of queens is necessary. For several decades, bees were selected on economic and behavioral aspects.

Rapid identification and genotyping of the honeybee pathogen by combining culturing and multiplex quantitative PCR.

Background: American Foulbrood (AFB) is a devastating disease of honey bee () larvae caused by the spore-forming, Gram-positive bacterium . In most countries, the law requires mandatory reporting of AFB to the veterinary authority.

Aim And Methods: To speed up detection and genotyping of spores, we compared different culturing protocols on Columbia sheep blood agar and developed a new multiplex quantitative polymerase chain reaction to distinguish between the two relevant genotypes enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) I and ERIC II.

Discovery of Paenibacillus larvae ERIC V: Phenotypic and genomic comparison to genotypes ERIC I-IV reveal different inventories of virulence factors which correlate with epidemiological prevalences of American Foulbrood.

Paenibacillus larvae is the etiological agent of American Foulbrood (AFB), a highly contagious brood disease of honey bees (Apis mellifera). AFB requires mandatory reporting to the veterinary authority in many countries and until now four genotypes, P. larvae ERIC I-IV, have been identified.

Pyrrolizidine alkaloids in floral honeys of tropical Ghana: a health risk assessment.

There is a vast amount of information about the nutritional and medicinal properties of honey as a result of its numerous benefits. However, honeys have been found to be contaminated with hepatotoxic and carcinogenic pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) on account of bees foraging on PA-containing plants. This study deals with the analysis of PAs in tropical honeys emanating from different agro-ecological zones of Ghana in order to assess its potential health risk.

Paenibacillus larvae-Directed Bacteriophage HB10c2 and Its Application in American Foulbrood-Affected Honey Bee Larvae.

Paenibacillus larvae is the causative agent of American foulbrood (AFB), the most serious honey bee brood bacterial disease. We isolated and characterized P. larvae-directed bacteriophages and developed criteria for safe phage therapy.

Paenilarvins: Iturin family lipopeptides from the honey bee pathogen Paenibacillus larvae.

The bacterium Paenibacillus larvae has been extensively studied as it is an appalling honey bee pathogen. In the present work, we screened crude extracts derived from fermentations of P. larvae genotypes ERIC I and II for antimicrobial activity, following the detection of four putative secondary metabolite gene clusters that show high sequence homology to known biosynthetic gene clusters for the biosynthesis of antibiotics.

Feeding deterrence and detrimental effects of pyrrolizidine alkaloids fed to honey bees (Apis mellifera).

Recent studies have shown the occurrence of plant derived pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) in retail honeys and pollen loads, but little is known about how these compounds influence the fitness of foraging honey bees. In feeding experiments, we tested a mix of tertiary PAs and the corresponding N-oxides from Senecio vernalis, pure monocrotaline, and 1,2-dihydromonocrotaline in 50% (w/w) sucrose solutions. The bees were analyzed chemically to correlate the observed effects to the ingested amount of PAs.

Authentication of the botanical and geographical origin of honey by mid-infrared spectroscopy.

The potential of Fourier transform mid-infrared spectroscopy (FT-MIR) using an attenuated total reflectance (ATR) cell was evaluated for the authentication of 11 unifloral (acacia, alpine rose, chestnut, dandelion, heather, lime, rape, fir honeydew, metcalfa honeydew, oak honeydew) and polyfloral honey types (n = 411 samples) previously classified with traditional methods such as chemical, pollen, and sensory analysis. Chemometric evaluation of the spectra was carried out by applying principal component analysis and linear discriminant analysis, the error rates of the discriminant models being calculated by using Bayes' theorem. The error rates ranged from <0.

Authentication of the botanical and geographical origin of honey by front-face fluorescence spectroscopy.

Front-face fluorescence spectroscopy, directly applied on honey samples, was used for the authentication of 11 unifloral and polyfloral honey types (n = 371 samples) previously classified using traditional methods such as chemical, pollen, and sensory analysis. Excitation spectra (220-400 nm) were recorded with the emission measured at 420 nm. In addition, emission spectra were recorded between 290 and 500 nm (excitation at 270 nm) as well as between 330 and 550 nm (excitation at 310 nm).