CREA Research Centre for Agriculture and Environment, Via di Saliceto 80, 40128 Bologna, Italy.
CREA Research Centre for Agriculture and Environment, Via di Saliceto 80, 40128 Bologna, Italy.
Sci Total Environ. 2022 Jan 20;805:150327. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150327. Epub 2021 Sep 14.
SARS-CoV-2 is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. Airflows sustain the infection spread, and in densely urbanized areas airborne particulate matters (PMs) are deemed to aggravate the viral transmission. Apis mellifera colonies are used as bioindicators as they allow environmental sampling of different nature, PMs included. This experiment demonstrates for the first time the possible use of honey bee colonies in the SARS-CoV-2 monitoring. The trial was conducted in Bologna on 18 March 2021, when the third wave of the Italian pandemic was at its peak and environmental conditions allowed high PM concentrations in the air. Sterile swabs were lined up at the hive entrance to sample the dusty material on the body of returning foragers. All of them resulted positive for the target genes of viral SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Likewise, internal samples were taken, but they resulted in no amplification of the target sequences. This experiment does not support speculations about the role of honey bees or their products in SARS-CoV-2 transmission. However, it indicates a novel use of A. mellifera colonies in the environmental detection of airborne human pathogens, at least in a densely urbanized area, deserving better understanding and possible integration with data from automatic air samplers.
SARS-CoV-2 是 COVID-19 大流行的罪魁祸首。气流维持着感染的传播，而在人口密集的城市地区，空气传播的颗粒物（PM）被认为会加剧病毒传播。蜜蜂种群被用作生物指示剂，因为它们可以对不同性质的环境进行采样，包括 PM。本实验首次证明了蜜蜂种群在 SARS-CoV-2 监测中的可能用途。该试验于 2021 年 3 月 18 日在博洛尼亚进行，当时意大利疫情的第三波高峰，环境条件允许空气中的 PM 浓度很高。无菌棉签排在蜂巢入口处，以采集返回觅食者身上的灰尘物质。所有棉签都对病毒 SARS-CoV-2 RNA 的靶基因呈阳性。同样，也采集了内部样本，但没有扩增目标序列。该实验并不支持关于蜜蜂或其产品在 SARS-CoV-2 传播中作用的推测。然而，它表明了一种在环境中检测空气中人类病原体的新型应用，至少在人口密集的城市地区，值得更好地理解，并可能与自动空气采样器的数据相结合。
