Non Technical Summary
Host-associated microbescan have dramatic effects on the health, fecundity, and longevity of many insect hosts, including the honey bee. The honey bee (Apis mellifera) is modern agriculture's most economically beneficial insect because of the pollination services provided by the thousands of foraging workers in each colony, their cosmopolitan floral preferences, and their long history of commercial management. Accordingly, our research group has been keenly focused on understanding how honey bee-associated microbial communities support the function of individual bees and the colony superorganism. We previously discovered that honey bee queens host a unique microbiome compared to those of worker bees, that this microbe is dominated by an organism called Bombella apis, that B. apis supplements bee nutrition, and that it generates a potent antifungal.Our prior work thereforegenerated several important conclusions and suggested promising avenues for follow-up investigation. We seek to understand the role of this microbe, and others, in shaping queen fecundity and longevity and therefore colony health.It is vital that we understand how insect-associated microbes shape insect health, both directly and indirectly, and affect their ecological role in food production systems.

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
301	3010	1100	100%

Knowledge Area
301 - Reproductive Performance of Animals;

Subject Of Investigation
3010 - Honey bees;

Field Of Science
1100 - Bacteriology;

Goals / Objectives
This project aims to underestand how the microbiome affects colony-level function and productivity and longevity of honey bee queens. We will accomplish this through the following objectives:Objective #1: Determine the microbial profile associated with queenliness.Objective #2: Correlate queen quality and microbial profile with colony-level metrics and worker microbial profiles.Objective #3: Determine environmental and physiological factors that establish the honey bee queen microbiome. Objective #4: Determine if microbes associated with "queenliness" in vivo alter queen development in vitro.Objective #5: Identify other metabolic functions of Bombella apis and related bacteria in vitro and in vivo

Project Methods
Methods used as part of this research include honey bee rearing, in vitro manipulations, microbiological methods, molecular biology, genomics, and bioinformatics.