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Review
. 2020 Mar 17;12(3):322.
doi: 10.3390/v12030322.

Honey Bee Queens and Virus Infections

Esmaeil Amiri  1   2 , Micheline K Strand  3 , David R Tarpy  2 , Olav Rueppell  1
Affiliations
Review

Honey Bee Queens and Virus Infections

Esmaeil Amiri et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

The honey bee queen is the central hub of a colony to produce eggs and release pheromones to maintain social cohesion. Among many environmental stresses, viruses are a major concern to compromise the queen's health and reproductive vigor. Viruses have evolved numerous strategies to infect queens either via vertical transmission from the queens' parents or horizontally through the worker and drones with which she is in contact during development, while mating, and in the reproductive period in the colony. Over 30 viruses have been discovered from honey bees but only few studies exist on the pathogenicity and direct impact of viruses on the queen's phenotype. An apparent lack of virus symptoms and practical problems are partly to blame for the lack of studies, and we hope to stimulate new research and methodological approaches. To illustrate the problems, we describe a study on sublethal effects of Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) that led to inconclusive results. We conclude by discussing the most crucial methodological considerations and novel approaches for studying the interactions between honey bee viruses and their interactions with queen health.

Keywords: IAPV; colony health; honey bee viruses; pathological symptom; queen quality; transgenerational effect; virus monitoring; virus quantification; virus transmission; worker attractiveness.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The funder had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Worker preferences for Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV)-exposed or control queens. For each queen pairing, ten independent workers were placed in a two-way olfactometer to choose between odors coming from an IAPV-inoculated (left) and sham-treated control queen (right) for ten minutes. Although workers chose the IAPV-inoculated queen significantly more than the control queen in one pairing (bottom bar), no overall preference according to experimental treatment was observed across all pairings.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Survival of IAPV-inoculated offspring from IAPV-exposed and control queens. IAPV survival of workers produced by eight queens that were pre-exposed to IAPV was compared to workers from eight sham-treated control queens in laboratory cages. Despite significant variability among queens (data not shown), survival of offspring from inoculated queens was not significantly different from the survival of offspring from non-infected queens.
Figure 3
Figure 3
IAPV infection of the experimental queens after the conclusion of the experiment. IAPV was detected by RT-qPCR in all queens of the IAPV-inoculated and of the sham-treated control group, with no significant difference in IAPV quantities between treatment groups, although two of the IAPV-inoculated queens (right) had titers that were three orders of magnitude higher than the other queens.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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