Beekeepers’ practices typical of commercial way of beekeeping significantly influence the fitness and health of honey bees. By many usual practices in commercial apiculture beekeepers prevent natural selection which is to improve the bees’ innate resistance. This work was aimed at the detection of differences in the occurrence of 8 bee pathogens between bee colonies kept in a commercial and traditional way. The research was conducted on apparently healthy 120 commercially kept colonies in DB hives (group C) and 24 traditionally kept colonies in primitive, so-called trmka hives (group T) on the Pešter plateau. Samples of brood and adult bees were taken from all of them to assess the occurence of bee brood disease agents (Paenibacillus larvae, Melissococcus plutonius, Ascosphaera apis and sacbrood virus - SBV) and adult bee disease agents (deformed wing virus - DWV, chronic bee paralysis virus - CBPV, acute bee paralysis virus – ABPV, and Nosema sp.). The identification of these was done using PCR-based methods. The species of Nosema was determined simultaneously with the microsporidial detection. Concerning bee brood disease-producing agents, in group C P. larvae (16.67% samples), A. apis (13.33%) and the SBV (96.67%) were confirmed, whilst in samples in group T the SBV was the only one which was detected (33.33%). M. plutonius was not found in any sample. As for adult bee diseases, in both C and T groups all three viruses monitored were detected (DWV, ABPV and CBPV), but their occurrence in the former (100.00%, 100.00% and 83.33%, respectively) was significantly higher (<0.001) than in the latter (33.33%, 33.33% and 33.33%, respectively). Nosema sp. was also detected in samples from both groups, with significantly higher occurrence (<0.001) in group C (61.67%) than in group T (29.17%). In all Nosema-positive samples only N. ceranae was confirmed. In group C no colonies were free from all monitored disease causes, whilst in group T there were 58.33% such colonies. It can be concluded that traditional, natural way of beekeeping provides significantly better conditions for maintenance of bee health and their resistance to pathogens.
Tarić et al. (Mon,) studied this question.