Impact of nutritional stress on the honeybee colony health

Abstract

Honeybees Apis mellifera are important pollinators of wild plants and commercial crops. For more than a decade, high percentages of honeybee colony losses have been reported worldwide. Nutritional stress due to habitat depletion, infection by different pests and pathogens and pesticide exposure has been proposed as the major causes. In this study we analyzed how nutritional stress affects colony strength and health. Two groups of colonies were set in a Eucalyptus grandis plantation at the beginning of the flowering period (autumn), replicating a natural scenario with a nutritionally poor food source. While both groups of colonies had access to the pollen available in this plantation, one was supplemented with a polyfloral pollen patty during the entire flowering period. In the short-term, colonies under nutritional stress (which consumed mainly E. grandis pollen) showed higher infection level with Nosema spp. and lower brood and adult bee population, compared to supplemented colonies. On the other hand, these supplemented colonies showed higher infection level with RNA viruses although infection levels were low compared to countries were viral infections have negative impacts. Nutritional stress also had long-term colony effects, because bee population did not recover in spring, as in supplemented colonies did. In conclusion, nutritional stress and Nosema spp. infection had a severe impact on colony strength with consequences in both short and long-term.