Florally transmitted diseases (FTDs): a newly discovered threat to bee communities.
Today some more of my research was published. In it I show that diseased bees deposit parasites on to the flowers they visit. These parasites can then infect healthy bees visiting the same flowers, or be transported by an unsusceptible bee species to other flowers to reach their host species.
I allowed bumblebees from hives infected with three different bumblebee diseases to forage on a patch of flowers in a flight cage for a period of 3 hours before removing them from the cage. Then I released disease-free honey bees into the cage and allowed them to forage for a further 3 hours on the same flowers, as well as a patch of uncontaminated flowers which were brought in at the same time. Immediately afterwards, the shared flower patch, the honeybee only flower patch and the honey bees were all screened for the bumblebee parasites with alarming results. All three of the parasites were detected on the shared flowers, while two out of three were detected on the flowers which only the honeybees had access to, as well as inside the honeybee colonies.
The experiment was repeated using honeybees from hives infected with two honeybee diseases and disease-free bumblebees and yielded similarly worrying results. Both parasites were found on the shared flowers, as well as on the flowers which only bumblebees had access to, and one of the two parasites was detected inside the bumblebee colony.
The study also compared how two different flower types aid the dispersal of bee parasites, and found that bell shaped Fairy’ thimble flowers contained higher parasite loads than more open Pansy flowers. This is likely because the bees spend more time in contact with bell-shaped flowers than they do with more easily accessible open flowers.
These results suggest that flowers play an important role in the transmission of diseases between bees.
“The upshot of this is that a range of parasites in diseased bee populations, such as infectious imported bees, may spread to wild bee populations that forage on the same flowers. On a wider level, flowers as parasite hotspots suggests that areas where there is a lot of pollinator traffic per flower, for example areas with low flower density, may have high parasite dispersal between pollinators compared to areas with low pollinator traffic per flower, such as flower rich areas.”
I’ve had a great evening at the NERC awards. Whilst I didn’t win, I came runner-up which means I get funding to continue researching threats commercial bees may pose to wild bees…and I got a cupcake!
In my category of ‘Early career impact’, Professor Hannah Cloke won for her work developing new techniques and methods to forecast flooding. The award evening, hosted at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London, was a huge networking event with key industrial partners attending and provided a platform to launch the NERC 50th anniversary year, celebrating half a century of ground-breaking science.
Today I had the pleasure of hosting the visit of Professor Mark Brown to the University of Bristol.
Today I started putting the finishing touches on the Sumner Lab website that showcases some of the work my Principal investigator Dr Seirian Sumner and her group have been producing. L Hopefully with help from the rest of the group, we will keep this updates with the groups output!
It feels like its been a long time coming! 4 years of ‘messing about with bees’, the compilation of a 7 chapter thesis, handing it in, a VIVA, some minor corrections and handing in the final, final draft (which by then bore the name ‘Final2_edited3_new_currentX’). I today had the formality of the graduation ceremony. It may have been one of the hottest days of the year but nothing was stopping me from donning my massive green gown on top of my suite.
To celebrate a joint meeting on the subject of bee health hosted by the Biochemical Society, the British Ecological Society and the Society for Experimental Biology in January 2014, the BES has compiled this virtual issue on Pollinator Ecology. The included papers are drawn from all five journals and provide examples of the latest research in pollinator ecology from flower visitation and ecosystem services, to the effects of invasive pollinators, agriculture, pesticides and bee pathogens. We hope that this selection of papers will be of interest to researchers and stakeholders in this highly topical field.
A. bombi from Argentina and Europe share a common, relatively recent origin. The absence of genetic structure across space and host species suggests that A. bombi may be acting as an emergent infectious disease across bee taxa and continents.
Results from my newly published work, 
Back from co-supervising the 2013 Zoology/Ecology students in Spain. Despite an unusual lack of crab spiders, students still managed to get enough data for a good project/presentation. We also had projects including Messor Harvesting efficiency, Scorpion territories and competition between Messor Sp. and Tapinoma erraticum.
Sometimes, the most desirable tool, is an item of cutlery! Here is a picture of Chris Tranter and I, taking a closer look at some of the local ant colonies. When we weren’t doing this, we had students working on various projects including Messor ant scouting behaviour, forager recruitment in Camponotus ants and arthropod diversity.
There’s not a lot I can do to help my friend, or indeed CFS sufferers in general, though it seems in many cases, the Doctors can’t completely help either. What I can do, and will do however is try to raise awareness of the disease. Raising awareness amongst friends and strangers alike and hopefully as I go, I may raise some money for the ME association who will further increase awareness and research into the treatment of CFS.