Search results for "bees"
showing 10 items of 88 documents
Determination of mycotoxins in bee pollen by gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.
2013
Bee pollen, promoted as a natural food supplement, is consumed increasingly by people to maintain a healthy diet. Depending on environmental conditions, pollen can also be an optimum medium for growth of molds such as Fusarium and Penicillium . A quick, easy, cheap, rapid, and safe (QuEChERS) extraction procedure followed by a gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) determination of eight selected Fusarium toxins in bee pollen was developed and optimized. Recovery studies at 20, 80, and 1000 μg/kg showed values between 73 and 95% with relative standard deviations (RSDs) of15% for all studied mycotoxins. Limits of quantitation (LOQ) ranged from 1 to 4 μg/kg. The proposed metho…
Medfly Ceratitis capitata as Potential Vector for Fire Blight Pathogen Erwinia amylovora: Survival and Transmission
2015
Monitoring the ability of bacterial plant pathogens to survive in insects is required for elucidating unknown aspects of their epidemiology and for designing appropriate control strategies. Erwinia amylovora is a plant pathogenic bacterium that causes fire blight, a devastating disease in apple and pear commercial orchards. Studies on fire blight spread by insects have mainly focused on pollinating agents, such as honeybees. However, the Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly) Ceratitis capitata (Diptera: Tephritidae), one of the most damaging fruit pests worldwide, is also common in pome fruit orchards. The main objective of the study was to investigate whether E. amylovora can survive and be tra…
Laboratory phase‐contrast nanotomography of unstained Bombus terrestris compound eyes
2021
Imaging the visual systems of bumblebees and other pollinating insects may increase understanding of their dependence on specific habitats and how they will be affected by climate change. Current high-resolution imaging methods are either limited to two dimensions (light- and electron microscopy) or have limited access (synchrotron radiation x-ray tomography). For x-ray imaging, heavy metal stains are often used to increase contrast. Here, we present micron-resolution imaging of compound eyes of buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) using a table-top x-ray nanotomography (nano-CT) system. By propagation-based phase-contrast imaging, the use of stains was avoided and the microanatomy co…
Identification of new viruses specific to the honey bee mite Varroa destructor
2019
AbstractLarge-scale colony losses among managed Western honey bees have become a serious threat to the beekeeping industry in the last decade. There are multiple factors contributing to these losses but the impact of Varroa destructor parasitism is by far the most important, along with the contribution of some pathogenic viruses vectored by the mite. So far, more than 20 viruses have been identified infecting the honey bee, most of them RNA viruses. They may be maintained either as covert infections or causing severe symptomatic infections, compromising the viability of the colony. In silico analysis of available transcriptomic data obtained from mites collected in the USA and Europe as wel…
Efficiency of QuEChERS approach for determining 52 pesticide residues in honey and honey bees
2016
A comparison between QuEChERS and other pesticide extraction procedures for honey and honey bee matrices is discussed. Honey bee matrix was extracted by solvent based procedure whereas solid phase extraction was the protocol for the honey matrix. The citrate buffered QuEChERS method was used for both matrices. The methods were evaluated regarding cost (equipment and reagents), time, accuracy, precision, sensitivity and versatility. The results proved that the QuEChERS protocol was the most efficient method for the extraction of the selected pesticides in both matrices. QuEChERS is the most economical and less time-consuming procedure.SPE and solvent-based extraction procedures show equivale…
Occurrence of pesticide residues in Spanish beeswax
2017
Beeswax from Spain was collected during 2016 to determine pesticide residues incidence. The 35 samples were divided in foundation, old combs, cappings or virgin beeswax to compare pesticide content between groups. Wax was screened for 58 pesticides or their degradation products by QuEChERS extraction and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Beeswax was uniformly contaminated with acaricides and, to a much lesser extent, with insecticide and fungicide residues. Virgin followed by cappings were less contaminated than foundation and old combs beeswax. The miticides applied in-hive had a contribution to average pesticide load higher than 95%. Compounds widely used as acaricides, …
A two-year monitoring of pesticide hazard in-hive: High honey bee mortality rates during insecticide poisoning episodes in apiaries located near agri…
2019
Pesticide residues in beebread, live and dead honey bees, together with honey bee death rate were monitored from June 2016 to June 2018 in three apiaries, located near agricultural settings and in wildlands. Dead honey bees were only collected and analyzed when significant mortality episodes occurred and pesticide content in beeswax of each experimental apiary was evaluated at the beginning of the study. Samples were extracted by a modified QuEChERS procedure and screened for pesticides residues by liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Pesticide hazard in the samples was evaluated through the hazard quotient approach (HQ). Beebread was widely contaminated with coumaphos and am…
New Insights into the Functional Morphology of the Lever Mechanism of Salvia pratensis (Lamiaceae)
2007
† Background and Aims The functional morphology of Salvia pratensis flowers was re-investigated, after new insights revealed that pollen dispensing is one of the main functions of the staminal lever. In particular, no detailed information was available regarding the process of pollen transfer and the forces arising between the pollen-bearing thecae and the pollinating bee’s body. The assumption was made that these forces play a significant role in pollen dispensing. † Methods The functional morphology of S. pratensis flowers and the interaction between flowers and bees (Apis mellifera) were studied by reconstructing stress and strains by using qualitative and semi-quantitative theoretical a…
Repeated evolution of soldier sub-castes suggests parasitism drives social complexity in stingless bees
2016
The differentiation of workers into morphological castes represents an important evolutionary innovation that is thought to improve division of labor in insect societies. Given the potential benefits of task-related worker differentiation, it is puzzling that physical worker castes, such as soldiers, are extremely rare in social bees and absent in wasps. Following the recent discovery of soldiers in a stingless bee, we studied the occurrence of worker differentiation in 28 stingless bee species from Brazil and found that several species have specialized soldiers for colony defence. Our results reveal that worker differentiation evolved repeatedly during the last ~ 25 million years and coinc…
Honeybees produce millimolar concentrations of non-neuronal acetylcholine for breeding: possible adverse effects of neonicotinoids
2016
The worldwide use of neonicotinoid pesticides has caused concern on account of their involvement in the decline of bee populations, which are key pollinators in most ecosystems. Here we describe a role of non-neuronal acetylcholine (ACh) for breeding of Apis mellifera carnica and a so far unknown effect of neonicotinoids on non-target insects. Royal jelly or larval food are produced by the hypopharyngeal gland of nursing bees and contain unusually high ACh concentrations (4–8 mM). ACh is extremely well conserved in royal jelly or brood food because of the acidic pH of 4.0. This condition protects ACh from degradation thus ensuring delivery of intact ACh to larvae. Raising the pH to ≥5.5 and…