FRONTIERS | Varroa destructor economic injury levels and pathogens associated with colony losses in Western Canada

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Original Article Published on Frontiers, May 20, 2024

The video essay below summarizes the objectives and findings of a study done in collaboration with the University of British Columbia, the British Columbia Honey Producers’ Association, the University of Guelph, the BC Ministry of Agriculture and Food, and the University of Manitoba. The objectives of this study were to collect and analyze data on levels of V. destructor and other pathogens in honey bee colonies from five different British Columbia regions, and determine if there were associations between the mite, the pathogens, and colony mortality, to propose a revised Economic Injury Level for Western Canada.

We thank the participating beekeepers for their valuable contribution to this study, including Claude Paradis and Kerry Clark (Apiary Inspector, Peace region), for their input and help during field work. We also thank Tim Wang for his assistance during field experiments, Becky Miller for assisting in organizing field work: Mario L. Morfin Ramirez for his assistance in the bioinformatic analysis, and Alvaro De la Mora for doing RNA extractions. We are also grateful to The British Columbia Honey Producers’ Association Executive for their support.

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The authors declare that this study received funding from British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and Food (agreement SCA22AG008), Project Apism (project ID 293), BC Hydro Peace Agricultural Compensation Fund through the Northern Development Initiative Trust Fund (project ID 7922 88), and the Floyd Wigler Grant, Western New York Honey Producers Inc. The funders were not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article or the decision to submit it for publication.

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