A pan-European epidemiological study reveals honey bee colony survival depends on beekeeper education and disease control

PLOS ONE, Dec 2019

Reports of honey bee population decline has spurred many national efforts to understand the extent of the problem and to identify causative or associated factors. However, our collective understanding of the factors has been hampered by a lack of joined up trans-national effort. Moreover, the impacts of beekeeper knowledge and beekeeping management practices have often been overlooked, despite honey bees being a managed pollinator. Here, we established a standardised active monitoring network for 5 798 apiaries over two consecutive years to quantify honey bee colony mortality across 17 European countries. Our data demonstrate that overwinter losses ranged between 2% and 32%, and that high summer losses were likely to follow high winter losses. Multivariate Poisson regression models revealed that hobbyist beekeepers with small apiaries and little experience in beekeeping had double the winter mortality rate when compared to professional beekeepers. Furthermore, honey bees kept by professional beekeepers never showed signs of disease, unlike apiaries from hobbyist beekeepers that had symptoms of bacterial infection and heavy Varroa infestation. Our data highlight beekeeper background and apicultural practices as major drivers of honey bee colony losses. The benefits of conducting trans-national monitoring schemes and improving beekeeper training are discussed.

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A pan-European epidemiological study reveals honey bee colony survival depends on beekeeper education and disease control

March A pan-European epidemiological study reveals honey bee colony survival depends on beekeeper education and disease control Antoine Jacques 0 1 2 Marion Laurent 0 2 EPILOBEE Consortium 0 2 Magali Ribière-Chabert 0 2 Mathilde Saussac 0 1 2 Ste phanie Bougeard 0 2 Giles E. Budge 0 2 Pascal Hendrikx 0 1 2 Marie- Pierre Chauzat 0 1 2 0 Funding: The financers of EPILOBEE were the European Commission, the Member States and the EU Reference Laboratory. The statistical analysis 1 Unit of coordination and support to surveillance, ANSES, Scientific Affairs Department for Laboratories , Maisons-Alfort , France , 2 Unit of Honey bee Pathology, ANSES, European Union and National Reference Laboratory for Honey bee Health, Sophia Antipolis, France, 3 Unit of Epidemiology and Welfare of Pork, ANSES , Ploufragan, France, 4 Fera, Sand Hutton, York , United Kingdom , 5 Institute for Agri-Food Research and Innovation, Newcastle University , Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear , United Kingdom 2 Editor: Nicolas Chaline, Universidade de São paulo , BRAZIL Reports of honey bee population decline has spurred many national efforts to understand the extent of the problem and to identify causative or associated factors. However, our collective understanding of the factors has been hampered by a lack of joined up trans-national effort. Moreover, the impacts of beekeeper knowledge and beekeeping management practices have often been overlooked, despite honey bees being a managed pollinator. Here, we established a standardised active monitoring network for 5 798 apiaries over two consecutive years to quantify honey bee colony mortality across 17 European countries. Our data demonstrate that overwinter losses ranged between 2% and 32%, and that high summer losses were likely to follow high winter losses. Multivariate Poisson regression models revealed that hobbyist beekeepers with small apiaries and little experience in beekeeping had double the winter mortality rate when compared to professional beekeepers. Furthermore, honey bees kept by professional beekeepers never showed signs of disease, unlike apiaries from hobbyist beekeepers that had symptoms of bacterial infection and heavy Varroa infestation. Our data highlight beekeeper background and apicultural practices as major drivers of honey bee colony losses. The benefits of conducting trans-national monitoring schemes and improving beekeeper training are discussed. Introduction Honey bees are highly effective pollinators with an annual global contribution to crop productivity of € 147 million [ 1 ]. Recent decades have seen heightened concern about honey bee colony mortaility across the United States [ 2, 3 ], Asia [4] and Europe [ 5 ]. Whilst the global number of managed colonies has risen by about 45% over the last 60 years [ 6, 7 ], the seemingly unpredicable loss of honey bee colonies exacerbates the shortage of pollinators leading to concerns that was co-funded by EFSA together with the EURL for honey bee health. GB acknowledges support from Fera and the Welsh Government (and MB, RG, GM, MP AW and IW in the Epilobee consortium) but did not have any additional role in the study design, data analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific role of these authors rare articulated in author contribution section. Competing interests: This commercial affiliation Fera does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. pollination deficits may limit crop production [ 8 ]. Indeed in the US, it was shown that the quantity and quality of pollination services haved declined through time [ 9 ]. Honey bees are subject to many interacting pressures including pests, pathogens, pesticides and climate changeÐfor a review see Vanbergen et al.[ 10 ]. National studies suggest different drivers of poor honey bee colony health depending on the geography. Pathogens were linked to poor honey bee health in the UK [ 11 ] and in Germany [ 12 ], pathogens and pesticides in Italy [ 13 ], while this was not found to be the case in Africa [ 14 ]. A first and recent Europewide experiment clearly indicated the presence of genotype-environment interactions originating from specific local adaptation of the honey bee populations [ 15 ]. Indeed, the most important result of this study was a significantly higher survivorship of the local genotypes compared to the non-local ones [ 16 ]. In the US, the diagnosed causes of overwintering mortality were different according to the beekeeper operation type: backyard beekeepers generally identified ªmanageableº factors (e.g., starvation, weak colony in the fall), while commercial beekeepers suggested environmental factors including pesticides [ 2 ]. In South-Africa, the effect of migratory beekeeping practices was found significant on colony losses, migratory beekeepers losing on average more colonies than stationary beekeepers [ 17 ]. For pollinators in general, other studies h (...truncated)


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Antoine Jacques, Marion Laurent, EPILOBEE Consortium, Magali Ribière-Chabert, Mathilde Saussac, Stéphanie Bougeard, Giles E. Budge, Pascal Hendrikx, Marie-Pierre Chauzat. A pan-European epidemiological study reveals honey bee colony survival depends on beekeeper education and disease control, PLOS ONE, 2017, Volume 12, Issue 3, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0172591