Details zur Publikation

Kategorie Textpublikation
Referenztyp Zeitschriften
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0302907
Lizenz creative commons licence
Titel (primär) Brood indicators are an early warning signal of honey bee colony loss—a simulation-based study
Autor Groeneveld, J.; Odemer, R.; Requier, F.
Quelle PLOS ONE
Erscheinungsjahr 2024
Department OESA
Band/Volume 19
Heft 5
Seite von e0302907
Sprache englisch
Topic T5 Future Landscapes
Daten-/Softwarelinks https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10999499
Supplements https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0302907.s001
Abstract Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are exposed to multiple stressors such as pesticides, lack of forage, and diseases. It is therefore a long-standing aim to develop robust and meaningful indicators of bee vitality to assist beekeepers While established indicators often focus on expected colony winter mortality based on adult bee abundance and honey reserves at the beginning of the winter, it would be useful to have indicators that allow detection of stress effects earlier in the year to allow for adaptive management. We used the established honey bee simulation model BEEHAVE to explore the potential of different indicators such as population size, number of capped brood cells, flight activity, abundance of Varroa mites, honey stores and a brood-bee ratio. We implemented two types of stressors in our simulations: 1) parasite pressure, i.e. sub-optimal Varroa treatment by the beekeeper (hereafter referred as Biotic stress) and 2) temporal forage gaps in spring and autumn (hereafter referred as Environmental stress). Neither stressor type could be detected by bee abundance or honey reserves at the end of the first year. However, all response variables used in this study did reveal early warning signals during the course of the year. The most reliable and useful measures seem to be related to brood and the abundance of Varroa mites at the end of the year. However, while in the model we have full access to time series of variables from stressed and unstressed colonies, knowledge of these variables in the field is challenging. We discuss how our findings can nevertheless be used to develop practical early warning indicators. As a next step in the interactive development of such indicators we suggest empirical studies on the importance of the number of capped brood cells at certain times of the year on bee population vitality.
dauerhafte UFZ-Verlinkung https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=29228
Groeneveld, J., Odemer, R., Requier, F. (2024):
Brood indicators are an early warning signal of honey bee colony loss—a simulation-based study
PLOS One 19 (5), e0302907 10.1371/journal.pone.0302907