Amiri Esmaeil, Seddon Gregory, Zuluaga Smith Wendy, Strand Micheline K, Tarpy David R, Rueppell Olav
Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27402-6170, USA.
Department of Entomology & Plant Pathology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7613, USA.
Insects. 2019 Jan 8;10(1):9. doi: 10.3390/insects10010009.
Queen loss or failure is an important cause of honey bee colony loss. A functional queen is essential to a colony, and the queen is predicted to be well protected by worker bees and other mechanisms of social immunity. Nevertheless, several honey bee pathogens (including viruses) can infect queens. Here, we report a series of experiments to test how virus infection influences queen⁻worker interactions and the consequences for virus transmission. We used Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) as an experimental pathogen because it is relevant to bee health but is not omnipresent. Queens were observed spending 50% of their time with healthy workers, 32% with infected workers, and 18% without interaction. However, the overall bias toward healthy workers was not statistically significant, and there was considerable individual to individual variability. We found that physical contact between infected workers and queens leads to high queen infection in some cases, suggesting that IAPV infections also spread through close bodily contact. Across experiments, queens exhibited lower IAPV titers than surrounding workers. Thus, our results indicate that honey bee queens are better protected by individual and social immunity, but this protection is insufficient to prevent IAPV infections completely.
蜂王损失或蜂王功能丧失是蜜蜂蜂群损失的一个重要原因。一只具有正常功能的蜂王对于一个蜂群至关重要，并且预计蜂王会受到工蜂和其他社会免疫机制的良好保护。然而，几种蜜蜂病原体（包括病毒）能够感染蜂王。在此，我们报告了一系列实验，以测试病毒感染如何影响蜂王与工蜂之间的相互作用以及病毒传播的后果。我们使用以色列急性麻痹病毒（IAPV）作为实验病原体，因为它与蜜蜂健康相关但并非无处不在。观察发现，蜂王有50%的时间与健康工蜂在一起，32%的时间与受感染工蜂在一起，18%的时间没有互动。然而，对健康工蜂的总体偏好没有统计学意义，并且个体之间存在相当大的差异。我们发现，在某些情况下，受感染工蜂与蜂王之间的身体接触会导致蜂王高度感染，这表明IAPV感染也通过密切的身体接触传播。在所有实验中，蜂王的IAPV滴度低于周围的工蜂。因此，我们的结果表明，蜜蜂蜂王受到个体免疫和社会免疫的更好保护，但这种保护不足以完全防止IAPV感染。
