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Microbial communities associated with honey bees in Brazil and in the United States

  • Education in Microbiology - Research Paper
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Abstract

Honey bee colony losses worldwide call for a more in-depth understanding of the pathogenic and mutualistic components of the honey bee microbiota and their relation with the environment. In this descriptive study, we characterized the yeast and bacterial communities that arise from six substrates associated with honey bees: corbicular pollen, beebread, hive debris, intestinal contents, body surface of nurses and forager bees, comparing two different landscapes, Minas Gerais, Brazil and Maryland, United States. The sampling of five hives in Brazil and four in the USA yielded 217 yeast and 284 bacterial isolates. Whereas the yeast community, accounted for 47 species from 29 genera, was dominated in Brazil by Aureobasidium sp. and Candida orthopsilosis, the major yeast recovered from the USA was Debaryomyces hansenii. The bacterial community was more diverse, encompassing 65 species distributed across 31 genera. Overall, most isolates belonged to Firmicutes, genus Bacillus. Among LAB, species from Lactobacillus were the most prevalent. Cluster analysis evidenced high structuration of the microbial communities, with two distinguished microbial groups between Brazil and the United States. In general, the higher difference among sites and substrates were dependents on the turnover effect (~ 93% of the beta diversity), with a more pronounced effect of nestedness (~ 28%) observed from Brazil microbiota change. The relative abundance of yeasts and bacteria also showed the dissimilarity of the microbial communities between both environments. These results provide a comprehensive view of microorganisms associated with A. mellifera, highlighting the importance of the environment in the establishment of the microbiota associated with honey bees.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was supported by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG) and Fundação Ezequiel Dias (FUNED).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Serviço de Fitoquímica e Prospecção Farmacêutica, Fundação Ezequiel Dias, Belo Horizonte, MG, 30510-010, Brazil

    Denise de Oliveira Scoaris

  2. Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações E Comunicações, Instituto Nacional da Mata Atlântica, Santa Teresa, ES, 29650-000, Brazil

    Frederic Mendes Hughes

  3. Serviço de Recursos Vegetais E Opoterápicos, Fundação Ezequiel Dias, Belo Horizonte, MG, 30510-010, Brazil

    Milton Adolfo Silveira

  4. USDA-ARS Bee Research Lab, Beltsville, MD, 20705, USA

    Jay Daniel Evans

  5. Pettis and Assoc. LLC, Salisbury, MD, 21801, USA

    Jeffery Stuart Pettis

  6. ProBee, Belo Horizonte, MG, 31310-520, Brazil

    Esther Margarida Alves Ferreira Bastos

  7. Departamento de Microbiologia, ICB, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, 31270-901, Brazil

    Carlos Augusto Rosa

Authors
  1. Denise de Oliveira Scoaris
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  2. Frederic Mendes Hughes
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  3. Milton Adolfo Silveira
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  4. Jay Daniel Evans
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  5. Jeffery Stuart Pettis
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  6. Esther Margarida Alves Ferreira Bastos
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  7. Carlos Augusto Rosa
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. Material preparation and field expeditions were performed by Denise de Oliveira Scoaris and Milton Adolfo Silveira. Data collection and analysis were performed by Denise de Oliveira Scoaris and Frederic Mendes Hughes, under the supervision of Jay Daniel Evans and Carlos Augusto Rosa. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Denise de Oliveira Scoaris and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Denise de Oliveira Scoaris.

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de Oliveira Scoaris, D., Hughes, F.M., Silveira, M.A. et al. Microbial communities associated with honey bees in Brazil and in the United States. Braz J Microbiol 52, 2097–2115 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42770-021-00539-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42770-021-00539-7

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