O'Connell Darren P, Healy Kevin, Wilton Jack, Botías Cristina, Jones Julia C
School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin, Dublin D04 N2E5, Ireland.
School of Natural Sciences, Ryan Institute, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland.
Sci Total Environ. 2025 Feb 1;963:178228. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.178228. Epub 2025 Jan 20.
The western honey bee Apis mellifera is the world's most important managed pollinator. However, globally honey bees have been facing increasing colony losses due to a combination of stress factors. Foremost among these is the invasive mite Varroa destructor, which is the pathogen most commonly linked to colony losses. Despite intensive research focus on this problem, V. destructor management remains extremely challenging, with no definitive treatment approach. A variety of synthetic chemical, agriculturally organic chemical, biological, and physical treatments have been trialled and used in V. destructor management, each with benefits and drawbacks. Here, we carried out a first systematic meta-analysis of the comparative effectiveness of V. destructor treatment methods. We incorporated data from 138 studies from 30 countries, across five continents and found that overall, synthetic chemicals show high effectiveness as a treatment due to their ability to suppress the V. destructor mite. In our analyses of honey bee responses, there was some evidence that synthetic chemicals may have an overall negative impact on them, even while suppressing V. destructor. For improving honey bee health measures, biological treatment methods showed the most positive effect, but with a relatively low sample size. Our study highlights that there is a relative lack of studies on biological management methods, with far more focus in the literature on chemical treatments. We show that, until biological methods receive greater research attention, agriculturally organic methods likely provide the best current treatment option, because they are well studied, nearly as effective at suppressing V. destructor as synthetic chemicals, and less associated with negative impacts on honey bees. Varroa destructor remains a major threat to honey bees globally, with the last large V. destructor free zone (Australia) having now been invaded, emphasising the need to fill these knowledge gaps.
西方蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）是世界上最重要的人工养殖传粉者。然而，由于多种压力因素的综合作用，全球范围内的蜜蜂蜂群损失一直在增加。其中最主要的是入侵性螨虫狄斯瓦螨（Varroa destructor），它是与蜂群损失最常相关的病原体。尽管针对这个问题进行了大量深入研究，但狄斯瓦螨的管理仍然极具挑战性，没有确定的治疗方法。人们已经试验并使用了多种合成化学、农业有机化学、生物和物理治疗方法来管理狄斯瓦螨，每种方法都有其优缺点。在这里，我们首次对狄斯瓦螨治疗方法的比较有效性进行了系统的荟萃分析。我们纳入了来自五大洲30个国家的138项研究的数据，发现总体而言，合成化学物质因其能够抑制狄斯瓦螨而显示出高效的治疗效果。在我们对蜜蜂反应的分析中，有一些证据表明，合成化学物质可能对它们产生总体负面影响，即使在抑制狄斯瓦螨的同时也是如此。为了改善蜜蜂健康指标，生物治疗方法显示出最积极的效果，但样本量相对较小。我们的研究强调，关于生物管理方法的研究相对较少，文献中更多地关注化学治疗方法。我们表明，在生物方法获得更多研究关注之前，农业有机方法可能是目前最好的治疗选择，因为它们经过了充分研究，在抑制狄斯瓦螨方面几乎与合成化学物质一样有效，并且对蜜蜂的负面影响较小。狄斯瓦螨仍然是全球蜜蜂面临的主要威胁，最后一个没有狄斯瓦螨的大片区域（澳大利亚）现在也已被入侵，这凸显了填补这些知识空白的必要性。
