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1. Genomic Signatures of Honey Bee Association in an Acetic Acid Symbiont

   https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaa183  

   Smith, Eric A ; Newton, Irene L ( October 2020 , Genome Biology and Evolution)

   Daniel, Sloan (Ed.)

   Abstract Recent declines in the health of the honey bee have startled researchers and lay people alike as honey bees are agriculture’s most important pollinator. Honey bees are important pollinators of many major crops and add billions of dollars annually to the US economy through their services. One factor that may influence colony health is the microbial community. Indeed, the honey bee worker digestive tract harbors a characteristic community of bee-specific microbes, and the composition of this community is known to impact honey bee health. However, the honey bee is a superorganism, a colony of eusocial insects with overlapping generations where nestmates cooperate, building a hive, gathering and storing food, and raising brood. In contrast to what is known regarding the honey bee worker gut microbiome, less is known of the microbes associated with developing brood, with food stores, and with the rest of the built hive environment. More recently, the microbe Bombella apis was identified as associated with nectar, with developing larvae, and with honey bee queens. This bacterium is related to flower-associated microbes such as Saccharibacter floricola and other species in the genus Saccharibacter, and initial phylogenetic analyses placed it as sister to these environmental bacteria. Here, we used comparative genomics of multiple honey bee-associated strains and the nectar-associated Saccharibacter to identify genomic changes that may be associated with the ecological transition to honey bee association. We identified several genomic differences in the honey bee-associated strains, including a complete CRISPR/Cas system. Many of the changes we note here are predicted to confer upon Bombella the ability to survive in royal jelly and defend themselves against mobile elements, including phages. Our results are a first step toward identifying potential function of this microbe in the honey bee superorganism. 

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2. Interactions between Cooccurring Lactic Acid Bacteria in Honey Bee Hives

   https://doi.org/10.1128/AEM.01259-15  

   Rokop, Z. P. ; Horton, M. A. ; Newton, I. L. ( September 2015 , Applied and Environmental Microbiology)

   Goodrich-Blair, H. (Ed.)

   ABSTRACT In contrast to the honey bee gut, which is colonized by a few characteristic bacterial clades, the hive of the honey bee is home to a diverse array of microbes, including many lactic acid bacteria (LAB). In this study, we used culture, combined with sequencing, to sample the LAB communities found across hive environments. Specifically, we sought to use network analysis to identify microbial hubs sharing nearly identical operational taxonomic units, evidence which may indicate cooccurrence of bacteria between environments. In the process, we identified interactions between noncore bacterial members ( Fructobacillus and Lactobacillaceae ) and honey bee-specific “core” members. Both Fructobacillus and Lactobacillaceae colonize brood cells, bee bread, and nectar and may serve the role of pioneering species, establishing an environment conducive to the inoculation by honey bee core bacteria. Coculture assays showed that these noncore bacterial members promote the growth of honey bee-specific bacterial species. Specifically, Fructobacillus by-products in spent medium supported the growth of the Firm-5 honey bee-specific clade in vitro . Metabolic characterization of Fructobacillus using carbohydrate utilization assays revealed that this strain is capable of utilizing the simple sugars fructose and glucose, as well as the complex plant carbohydrate lignin. We tested Fructobacillus for antibiotic sensitivity and found that this bacterium, which may be important for establishment of the microbiome, is sensitive to the commonly used antibiotic tetracycline. Our results point to the possible significance of “noncore” and environmental microbial community members in the modulation of honey bee microbiome dynamics and suggest that tetracycline use by beekeepers should be limited. 

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3. Honey bee introductions displace native bees and decrease pollination of a native wildflower

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3939  

   Page, Maureen L. ; Williams, Neal M. ( January 2023 , Ecology)

   Introduced species can have cascading effects on ecological communities, but indirect effects of species introductions are rarely the focus of ecological studies. For example, managed honey bees (Apis mellifera) have been widely introduced outside their native range and are increasingly dominant floral visitors. Multiple studies have documented how honey bees impact native bee communities through floral resource competition, but few have quantified how these competitive interactions indirectly affect pollination and plant reproduction. Such indirect effects are hard to detect because honey bees are themselves pollinators and may directly impact pollination through their own floral visits. The potentially huge but poorly understood impacts that non‐native honey bees have on native plant populations combined with increased pressure from beekeepers to place hives in U.S. National Parks and Forests makes exploring impacts of honey bee introductions on native plant pollination of pressing concern. In this study, we used experimental hive additions, field observations, as well as single‐visit and multiple‐visit pollination effectiveness trials across multiple years to untangle the direct and indirect impacts of increasing honey bee abundance on the pollination of an ecologically important wildflower,Camassia quamash. We found compelling evidence that honey bee introductions indirectly decrease pollination by reducing nectar and pollen availability and competitively excluding visits from more effective native bees. In contrast, the direct impact of honey bee visits on pollination was negligible, and, if anything, negative. Honey bees were ineffective pollinators, and increasing visit quantity could not compensate for inferior visit quality. Indeed, although the effect was not statistically significant, increased honey bee visits had a marginally negative impact on seed production. Thus, honey bee introductions may erode longstanding plant‐pollinator mutualisms, with negative consequences for plant reproduction. Our study calls for a more thorough understanding of the indirect effects of species introductions and more careful coordination of hive placements.

    

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4. Cell Lines for Honey Bee Virus Research

   https://doi.org/10.3390/v12020236  

   Guo, Ya ; Goodman, Cynthia L. ; Stanley, David W. ; Bonning, Bryony C. ( February 2020 , Viruses)

   With ongoing colony losses driven in part by the Varroa mite and the associated exacerbation of the virus load, there is an urgent need to protect honey bees (Apis mellifera) from fatal levels of virus infection and from the non-target effects of insecticides used in agricultural settings. A continuously replicating cell line derived from the honey bee would provide a valuable tool for the study of molecular mechanisms of virus–host interaction, for the screening of antiviral agents for potential use within the hive, and for the assessment of the risk of current and candidate insecticides to the honey bee. However, the establishment of a continuously replicating honey bee cell line has proved challenging. Here, we provide an overview of attempts to establish primary and continuously replicating hymenopteran cell lines, methods (including recent results) of establishing honey bee cell lines, challenges associated with the presence of latent viruses (especially Deformed wing virus) in established cell lines and methods to establish virus-free cell lines. We also describe the potential use of honey bee cell lines in conjunction with infectious clones of honey bee viruses for examination of fundamental virology. 

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5. The cuticular hydrocarbon profiles of honey bee workers develop via a socially-modulated innate process

   https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.41855  

   Vernier, Cassondra L ; Krupp, Joshua J ; Marcus, Katelyn ; Hefetz, Abraham ; Levine, Joel D ; Ben-Shahar, Yehuda ( February 2019 , eLife)

   Honey bees are social insects that live in large groups called colonies, within structures known as hives. The young adult bees stay within the hive to build nests and care for the young, while the older bees leave the hive to forage for food. Honey bees store food and other valuable resources in their hives, so they are often targeted by predators, parasites and ‘robber’ bees from other colonies. Therefore, it is important for bees to determine whether individuals trying to enter the nest are group members or intruders. While it is known that social insects use blends of waxy chemicals called cuticular hydrocarbons to identify group members at the entrance to the colony, it is not clear how members of the same colony acquire a similar blend of cuticular hydrocarbons. Some previous work suggested that in some ant species (which are also social insects), colony members exchange cuticular hydrocarbons with each other so that all members of the colony are covered with a similar blend of chemicals. However, it was not known whether honey bees also share cuticular hydrocarbons between colony members in order to identify members of a hive. Vernier et al. used chemical, molecular and behavioral approaches to study the cuticular hydrocarbons found on honey bees. The results show that, rather than exchanging chemicals with other members of their colony, individual bees make their own blends of cuticular hydrocarbons. As a bee ages it makes different blends of cuticular hydrocarbons, and by the time it starts to leave the hive to forage it makes a blend that is specific to the colony it belongs to. The production of this final blend is influenced by the environment within the hive. Thus, the findings of Vernier et al. indicate that honey bees guarding the entrance to a hive can only identify non-colony-member forager bees as intruders, rather than any non-colony-member bee that happens upon the hive entrance. Honey bees play an essential role in pollinating many crop plants so understanding how these insects maintain their social groups may help to improve agriculture in the future. Furthermore, this work may aid our understanding of how other social insects interact in a variety of biological situations. 

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