CoordenaÃÃo de AperfeÃoamento de Pessoal de NÃvel Superior / A criaÃÃo de abelhas sem ferrÃo, chamada meliponicultura, à uma atividade sustentÃvel que ajuda a preservar as abelhas e o meio ambiente, atravÃs do serviÃo de polinizaÃÃo, prestado Ãs plantas nativas, alÃm de incrementar a renda de agricultores familiares. Objetivou-se com este estudo investigar a situaÃÃo atual da meliponicultura no Estado do CearÃ. Foram entrevistados 159 meliponicultores distribuÃdos em todas as mesorregiÃes do Estado. Os questionÃrios aplicados continham perguntas fechadas e abertas, referentes ao perfil dos meliponicultores, caracterÃsticas das propriedades onde sÃo criadas as abelhas, bem como meliponÃrios, colmÃias e caracterÃsticas do manejo aplicado Ãs colÃnias. Concomitantemente, foram coletados espÃcimes de abelhas das colÃnias para identificaÃÃo das espÃcies criadas. Os resultados foram apresentados em forma de percentual e evidenciam que a jandaÃra (Melipona subnitida) à a espÃcie de abelha sem ferrÃo mais criada no Estado do CearÃ. A maioria dos meliponicultores ainda pratica a atividade de maneira tradicional e o conhecimento sobre a biologia e manejo dos meliponÃneos em alguns casos à insipiente. Foi observado que algumas prÃticas de manejo como a alimentaÃÃo artificial sÃo muito importantes para manutenÃÃo e melhoria da produtividade das colÃnias. A capacitaÃÃo tÃcnica dos meliponicultores à de extrema importÃncia para reduÃÃo de prÃticas prejudiciais aos meliponÃneos, alÃm de melhorar a produtividade e transmitir boas prÃticas de fabricaÃÃo dos produtos das abelhas sem ferrÃo. A meliponicultura apresenta alto potencial para ser desenvolvida no Cearà e vem crescendo nos Ãltimos anos. No entanto, necessita de maior apoio por parte de ÃrgÃos governamentais para implementaÃÃo de projetos que incentivem a meliponicultura, planos de manejo e conservaÃÃo do meio ambiente. / Work with stingless bees are called meliponiculture. It is an sustainable activity which supports the preservation of both bees and environment through pollination services provided to the native plants, as well as increase the income of farmers. The main objective of this work was investigate the currently status of the meliponiculture in Ceara, Brazil. Were interviewed 159 stingless beekeepers who are distributed in whole state. The applied questionnaire has objective and subjective questions, all about their personal, professional and environmental features; meliponary, hives, handling characteristics applied to colonies etc. At the same time were collected specimens of bees from their colonies to accurately identify the kept species. The results were shown by percentage and highlighted that jandaÃra bees (Melipona subnitida) is the most common specie kept in the state. Most of the stingless beekeepers still practicing that activity traditionally and the knowledge about meliponines biology and handling sometimes are incipient as much as the handlings are ancient. Were observed that handling practices as artificial feeding are extremely important to maintain and increase of the colonies productivity. The technical training for beekeepers is extremely important to reduce depredatory practices to meliponines, besides improve productivity and teach good manufacturing practices around stingless bees products. The meliponiculture have a huge potential to evolve and is possible to realize a significantly grown on that activity in recent years. In spite of it is needed better support from the government to these stingless beekeepers in form of building or support projects which encourage the activity, the confection of handling plans and environment conservation.

Cette thèse de Doctorat, intitulée « Le miel en Égypte ancienne. Économie et fonction d’un produit précieux », a pour principal objectif d’identifier les différents domaines dans lesquels le miel intervenait dans la société égyptienne antique. Elle évalue notamment l’état des connaissances des Anciens Égyptiens en matière d’apiculture : les techniques employées depuis la récolte jusqu’à la mise en pot, le choix des zones géographiques de production, la typologie des miels.Elle vise également à révéler l’existence d’une économie spécifique à cette denrée enconsidérant notamment sa distribution, sa valeur marchande au cours de l’histoirepharaonique ainsi que la portée des échanges avec les cultures voisines.Enfin, elle interroge les textes afin de définir les divers usages du miel : alimentaire, au moyen des scènes de « pâtisserie » et des nombreuses listes d’offrandes ; médical, grâce aux papyri médico-magiques ; rituel, à travers l’étude des inscriptions de tombes et de temples. / Entitled "Honey in Ancient Egypt. Economy and Functions according to a valuable product", this PhD thesis main objective is to identify the various areas where the honey had a role in ancient Egyptian society. This study assesses specifically the state of knowledge of the ancient Egyptians in terms of beekeeping techniques from harvest to potting, as well as the selection of adapted geographical areas of production and the existing classification of each type of honey.My PhD thesis aims at showing the existence of a specific economy for this commodity and especially its distribution, its market value during the Pharaonic history and the scope of exchanges with neighbouring cultures.Finally, this research examines texts to define the various daily uses of honey : food, consisting in scenes of "pastry", many lists of offerings, etc. ; medical, thanks to medical-magical papyri ; ritual, through the study of inscriptions of tombs and temples.

Honey bees are fundamental for maintaining biodiversity in our ecosystems, but a recent decline in honey bee colonies has caused a growing concern for honey bee health worldwide. One component of colony collapses is Nosema (Microsporidia), which is associated with colony collapses in many subtropical regions. However, infection by Nosema is also known to accumulate within the honey bee hive during overwintering in colder climates. In this study, the prevalence of Nosema is compared between four honey bee subspecies during fall and winter and is focused on two hypotheses: 1) infection by Nosema is more prevalent in honey bees during winter and 2) infection by Nosema differs between different honey bee subspecies. Bees were dissected, and their guts were analysed for Nosema spores using a light microscope. Results showed a difference in amount of Nosema infected colonies between winter and fall. Also, results showed a difference between Buckfast bee (A. mellifera hybrid) and Carniolan bee (A. mellifera carnica) in Nosema infected colonies during the fall period. These results indicate that infection by Nosema in cold climates might be more prevalent than previously thought. Additionally, there might be differences in resilience between honey bee subspecies, but infection of Nosema seem to depend less on subspecies than season. More research is needed on Nosema in cold regions to assess the effect of Nosema on honey bees in Sweden and worldwide to prevent future colony collapses of honey bees.

Det här arbetet handlar om tambins inverkan på naturligt förekommande pollinatörer. Min frågeställning berör: tillgången på näring, hälsotillståndet och populationsnivån hos naturligt förekommande pollinatörer i förhållande till tambins närvaro. Det som framkommit av den här litteraturstudien är att introducerade tambin leder till att naturligt förekommande pollinatörer minskar i antal kring bikuporna, en del arter söker föda på andra blommor eller senare på dygnet än tidigare. Den minskade tillgången på föda som denna konkurrens innebär har en negativ inverkan på humlors kroppsstorlek och därmed deras överlevnad. Samt att tambin kan föra över patogener så som varroakvalster, nosemasjuka och deformed wing virus till humlor vilket leder till minskad livslängd och sämre fortplantning. / This study is about the impact of honeybees on native pollinators. My questions concerns: availability of food, the health and population level of native pollinators in relation to the presence of honeybees. What has emerged from this literature review is that the introduction of honeybees lead to a decline in numbers of bee and bumblebee pollinators in proximity of the hives and also alters their behaviour, some species choose to forage on other flowers, or later in the day than before honeybees where introduced. The reduced availability of food that this competition induces has a negative impact on the size of bumblebees body’s and thus their survival. What was also discovered was that honeybees can transfer pathogens such as varroa mites, the microsporidium Nosema ceranae and deformed wing virus to bumblebees, leading to reduced life expectancy and poor propagation.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1955 K31 / Master of Science

Bumble bees provide valuable pollination services to many agricultural crops and wild flower species. Consequently, evidence that wild populations are in decline has caused widespread concern. Among multiple causal factors, some have singled out neonicotinoid pesticides as potentially a major contributor to these declines. Bumble bees are exposed to neonicotinoids, such as imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, whilst foraging for nectar and pollen from treated crops. For neonicotinoids to cause population decline, the typical residues that bumble bees encounter in the field (defined here as between 1–12 μg kg-1) should be capable of reducing colony success by detrimentally impacting demographically relevant endpoints such as reproduction and worker performance. Whether field-realistic neonicotinoids are capable of causing such effects is yet to be fully established. The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate the effects of field-realistic neonicotinoids on endpoints of demographic importance and improve understanding of the effect mechanisms of neonicotinoids in bumble bees. Laboratory experiments were conducted with Bombus terrestris L. exposed to dietary neonicotinoids up to 98 μg kg-1. Results showed that food consumption and production of brood (eggs and larvae) in queenless B. terrestris microcolonies were significantly reduced by the two highest concentrations of imidacloprid and thiamethoxam tested (39, 98 μg kg-1), but only imidacloprid produced a negative effect when concentrations were in the typical field-realistic range. Imidacloprid’s affect on microcolonies was mirrored in queenright colonies where field-realistic concentrations substantively reduced both feeding and brood production. It was postulated that the detrimental effects of imidacloprid on brood production emerge principally from nutrient limitation imposed by the failure of individuals to feed. Removing imidacloprid from the bees’ diet resulted in the recovery of feeding and brood production in queenright colonies, even when previously exposed to high doses (98 μg kg-1). Investigation into the effect mechanisms of imidacloprid in B. terrestris revealed that cytochrome P450 enzymes are not important for metabolism of the neonicotinoid in adult workers. A transcriptomic analysis indicated B. terrestris exhibit a general stress response to imidacloprid, characterised by the alteration in expression of genes involved in, for example, metabolism and storage of energy. The thesis findings raise further concern about the threat of imidacloprid to wild bumble bees. However, they also suggest that some demographically important endpoints are resilient to imidacloprid as a realistic pulsed exposure, and that bumble bees may be less sensitive to field-realistic concentrations of thiamethoxam. Further research, which is required to fully establish the demographic consequences for bumble bees of exposure to neonicotinoids, can be developed based on the foundation of work presented here.

No description available.

Most animals contain chronic microbial infections that inflict no harm on their hosts. Recently, the gut microflora of humans and other animals have been characterized. However, little is known about the forces that shape the diversity of these bacterial communities. In this work, comparative genomics was used to investigate the evolutionary dynamics of host-adapted bacterial communities, using Wolbachia infecting arthropods and Lactobacteria infecting bees as the main model systems. Wolbachia are maternally inherited bacteria that cause reproductive disorders in arthropods, such as feminization, male killing and parthenogenesis. These bacteria are difficult to study because they cannot be cultivated outside their hosts. We have developed a novel protocol employing multiple displacement amplification to isolate and sequence their genomes. Taxonomically, Wolbachia is classified into different supergroups. We have sequenced the genomes of Wolbachia strain wHa and wNo that belong to supergroup A and B, respectively, and are present as a double-infection in the fruit-fly Drosophila simulans. Together with previously published genomes, a supergroup comparison of strains belonging to supergroups A and B indicated rampant homologous recombination between strains that belong to the same supergroup but were isolated from different hosts. In contrast, we observed little recombination between strains of different supergroups that infect the same host. Likewise, phylogenetically distinct members of Lactic acid bacteria co-exist in the gut of the honeybee, Apis mellifera, without transfer of genes between phylotypes. Nor did we find any evidence of co-diversification between symbionts and hosts, as inferred from a study of 13 genomes of Lactobacillus kunkeei isolated from diverse bee species and different geographic origins. Although Lactobacillus kunkeii is the most frequently isolated strain from the honey stomach, we hypothesize that the primary niche is the beebread where the bacteria are likely to contribute to the fermentation process. In the human gut, the microbial community has been shown to interact with the immune system, and likewise the microbial communities associated with insects are thought to affect the health of their host. Therefore, a better understanding of the role and evolution of endosymbiotic communities is important for developing strategies to control the health of their hosts.

Pollinator-driven selection is thought to drive much of the extraordinary diversity of flowering plants. Plants that produce floral traits preferred by particular pollinators are more likely to receive conspecific pollen and to evolve further adaptations to those pollinators that enhance pollination and ultimately generate floral diversity. Two mechanisms in particular, sensory bias and learning, are thought to explain how pollinator preference can contribute to divergence and speciation in flowering plants. While the preferences of pollinators, such as bees, flies, and birds, are frequently implicated in patterns of floral trait evolution, the role of learning in generating reproductive isolation and trait divergence for different floral types within plant populations is not well understood. Floral color polymorphism in particular provides an excellent opportunity to examine how pollinator behavior and learning might maintain the different floral morphs. In this study we asked if bumble bees showed innate preferences for different color morphs of the pollen-only plant Solanum tridynamum, whether bees formed preferences for the morphs with which they had experience collecting pollen from, and the strength of those learned preferences. Using an absolute conditioning protocol, we gave bees experience collecting pollen from a color polymorphic plant species that offered only pollen rewards. Despite initially-naïve bees showing no apparent innate bias toward human-white versus human-purple flower morphs, we did find evidence of a bias in learning. Specifically, bees learned strong preferences for purple corollas, but learned only weak preferences for hypochromic (human-white) corollas. We discuss how our results might explain patterns of floral display evolution, particularly as they relate to color polymorphisms. Additionally, we propose that the ease with which floral visual traits are learned—i.e., biases in learning—can influence the evolution of floral color as a signal to pollinators.

The astonishing diversity of floral form in angiosperm plants is driven in large part by preferences of pollinators for various floral traits, including learned preferences. Remarkably, almost all of a vast literature on learning and memory in pollinators relates to nectar as a reward, even though bees and many flies, beetles, and butterflies must collect pollen. In this study, we asked if bees formed preferences for plant species from which pollen had been collected successfully. Using absolute conditioning, we gave pollen foraging bees experience with plant species that offered only pollen rewards. Naive bees generally showed modest preferences, whereas experienced bees adopted strong preferences for those species over alternative species not previously experienced. Learned preferences were retained for at least 24 h, consistent with preferences learned with nectar rewards. These experience-mediated changes in preference raised the possibility that bees formed associations between particular floral features and pollen rewards. We therefore asked if learned preferences required that bees successfully collect pollen. Using differential conditioning, we determined that learned preferences were strongly influenced by receipt of a pollen reward. In a final experiment, we characterized the importance of 2 floral features, the corolla and the anther, in the expression of learned preferences. Although experience altered responses to both floral parts, responses to anthers were influenced more strongly. We discuss recent evidence in the literature for associative learning with pollen rewards and propose that learned preferences in the context of pollen collection have played an important role in floral display evolution.