Location: Carl Hayden Bee Research Center
2025 Annual Report
Accomplishments
1. Ground-breaking method to track honey bee queen health. Queen honey bee failures represent a major economic concern for commercial beekeepers, with queens often dying unexpectedly or becoming less productive over time, but no standardized methods existed to monitor individual queen health changes over a period of time. Understanding how queen age, housing conditions, and seasonal factors affect immune function and microbiome stability is critical for improving queen longevity and colony success. ARS researchers in Tucson, Arizona, developed and deployed the first truly longitudinal sampling method to track individual queen health over a four-month period by collecting hemolymph (bee blood) and feces samples repeatedly from the same queens. The method was tested on queens of different ages and under different conditions, with no negative effects on queen survival compared to controls. Hemolymph samples enable measurement of immune gene expression and viral loads, while fecal samples allow tracking of gut microbiome changes and viral shedding patterns over time. This breakthrough methodology provides beekeepers and researchers with tools to predict queen failures and develop targeted interventions to extend the productive lifespan of the queen.
2. Predicting bee disease across the landscape: Assembling the diagnostic database. Assembling the diagnostic database. Honey bee brood diseases cause significant colony losses, but the relationship between larval gut bacteria and disease susceptibility remained poorly understood due to limited sample sizes and geographic scope in previous studies. Understanding how bacterial communities change during disease progression and whether these patterns are consistent across different regions is critical for developing predictive tools and targeted treatments for brood diseases. ARS researchers in Tucson, Arizona, collected, processed, and curated over 1,400 samples of both healthy and diseased honey bee larvae from apiaries across 30 states, adding to the largest dataset of larval microbiomes ever assembled. The comprehensive database includes detailed metadata allowing researchers to correlate viral infection patterns with specific bacterial community signatures and test whether disease-associated microbial changes are consistent across different hives, locations, and states. This database will track disease patterns over time, across diverse geographic regions and management practices.
3. Where I lay my hat is my home: Niche-specificity of honey bee bacterial communities. Honey bee colonies depend on beneficial bacteria for nutrition, immunity, and disease resistance, but the specific bacterial communities associated and shared between different colony members (workers, queens, drones, and larvae) is not well understood. ARS researchers in Tucson, Arizona, analyzed 4,600 publicly available genetic libraries to create the most comprehensive map of honey bee microbiomes across all colony members. The analysis confirmed 10 core bacterial genera present in over 70% of samples at significant abundance levels, while revealing distinct niche-specific bacterial communities for each colony member type. The research identified previously unknown bacterial species, including an aerobic Gilliamella species and a Bombella species highly prevalent in queens, expanding their understanding of honey bee-bacteria relationships. Their results contribute novel insights into species diversity, niche associations, microbiome resilience and co-occurrence of bacterial species that comprise the total honey bee microbiota.
Review Publications
Anderson, K.E., Allen, N.O., Copeland, D.C., Kortenkamp, O., Erickson, R.J., Mott, B.M., Oliver, R. 2024. A longitudinal field study of commercial honey bees shows that non-native probiotics do not rescue antibiotic treatment, and are generally not beneficial. Scientific Reports. 14. Article 1954. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-52118-z.
Carroll, M.J., Brown, N.J. 2024. Varroa mite removal from whole honey bee colonies by powdered sugar dusting is enhanced by crowding and mechanical agitation of treated workers. Journal of Apicultural Research. 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1080/00218839.2024.2361959.