Progress 01/01/15 to 12/31/19
Outputs
Target Audience:Follow scientists, beekeepers and the general public. Changes/Problems:Goal 1 was not finished, due to lack of funding. We tried to determine whether honey bee workers can move spores from the midgut to the mouth parts but background infection was not succesful when one college student student was hired to conduct this experiment. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?I had three visitors from China who participated in this study. They learned experimental design, statistical analyses, and manuscript preparation. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Results of possible manipulation of honey bee workes manipulated by Nosema ceranae was presented at the American Bee Research Conference, Annual Conference of Entomological Society of America, and the MSU Beacon (Evolution in Action) Congress. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1 Not done Goal 2 Transmission route of Nosema ceranae in honey bees. We tried to determine whether honey bee queens play a crucial role in transmitting Nosema ceranae. Results are still being analyzed to see if this is true. Goal 3 We determined whether Nosema ceranae infected bees can be distinguished by guard bees. Guards are a special group of bees that check incoming workers to see if they belong to the correct colony. We found that guards accepted more infected non-nestmates, thus suggesting that nosema might be manipulating their hosts (honey bee workers), so that workers will be more likely to be accepted by non-nestmates. This helps the parasite (nosema) because it is spread between colonies. Goal 4 We then tested whether this is mediated via cuticular hydrocarbons. We inoculated honey bees with Nosema ceranae and let them age for 7 days, then extracted their cuticular hydrocarbons, as well as those from the control bees (not infected but handled the same way). We then injected the samples into GC/MS. We have some evidence of changes in cuticular hydrocarbons after Nosema ceranae infection.
Publications
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Progress 10/01/17 to 09/30/18
Outputs
Target Audience:Target audience reached by the three presentations include peer scientists, undergraduate and graduate students, beekeepers and the general public. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Two undergraduate students were trained during this project. The training include general beekeeping skills, scientific methods for conducting honey bee related research. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Three talks were presented on research on Nosema. One talk was presented at Entomological Society of America to peer entomologisits, one at the MSU Beacon conference (NSF center for studying "evolution in action"). Another talk was presented to Michigan Beekeepers on honey bee diseases and pests. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Will need to obtain a GREEEN grant to study the missing objectives so far.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 3 and 4: Last year around Oct we have conducted field trials with marked bees which were full colonies fed sugar solution with heat-killed spores. We found that Nosema vaccination treatment can reduce subsequent spore infection levels by 50%. Moreover, this treatment appears to upregulate the Toll gene, defensin, at day 7 and day 15 after the immune priming treatment. We are collecting another set of data this year (on going now) so that we have larger sample sizes. We also inoculated honey bees with Nosema ceranae and let them age for 7 days, then extracted their cuticular hydrocarbons, as well as those from the control bees (not infected but handled the same way). We then injected the samples into GC/MS. We are trying to understand the mechanisms via which Nosema affects host behavior. Last year we found Nosema infected bees were more easily accepted by non-nestmates so we are investigating whether this is mediated via cuticular hydrocarbons. We found evidence that cuticular hydrocarbons are changed after bees are infected with Nosema ceranae.
Publications
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Progress 10/01/16 to 09/30/17
Outputs
Target Audience:Beekeepers, honey bee scientists and the general public are the target audiences of this project. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Will try to obtain funding to accomplish goals 1, 2 and 4. One paper will be prepared for goal 3 and published during 2018.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We tried to determine whether worker honey bees could infect others with the fecal pathway excluded (by fixing bees inside Eppendorf tubes, which allow them to feed other bees but others or the bee itself, cannot clean the lower part of their body). However, no usable data were generated because even in positive controls, bees that allowed to include both fecal and oral, had no transmission rates.
Publications
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Progress 10/01/15 to 09/30/16
Outputs
Target Audience:Beekeepers, honey bee scientists and the general public are the target audiences of this project. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will try to attack other goals in the next reporting period. The past two periods we have been focusing other stresses besides Nosema, such as pesticides and transportation.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: we are testing if "vaccinating" honey bees with inactivated spores would protect honey bees from future infections by Nosema ceranae. Data will be produced in Sept and Oct of 2016.
Publications
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Progress 01/01/15 to 09/30/15
Outputs
Target Audience:Beekeepers in the state and out of state, reached via presentations at conferences. Honey bee scientists all around the world reached by peer reviewed publications. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?One visitor from China was performing experiment related to Ojective 4. She was trained for beekeeping, lab techniques and scientific methods (experimental design, statistics and manuscript preparation). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We plan to conduct one to two experiments related to objectives 1-3 in the next field season. A manuscript will be prepared shortly with data from Obj. 4.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Objective 4. We determined whether nosema infected bees can be distinguished by guard bees. Guards are a special group of bees that check incoming workers to see if they belong to the correct colony. We found that guards were not able to make this distinction and accepted or rejected equally infected or control bees from the same source colonies.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Wei-Fone Huang, W.-F., L. Solter, K.I. Aronstein, Z.Y. Huang. 2015. Infectivity and virulence of Nosema ceranae and Nosema apis in commercially available North American honey bees. J. Invertebrate Pathology, 124: 107-113.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Milbrath, M.O., T. V. Tran, W.-F. Huang, L.F. Solter, D.R. Tarpy, F. K. Lawrence, Z.Y. Huang*. 2015. Comparative virulence and competition between Nosema apis and Nosema ceranae in honey bees (Apis mellifera). J. Invertebrate Pathology, 125: 9-15
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