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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Giles Budge
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2024 Gill et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Tropilaelaps spp. are invasive mites that cause severe disease in Apis mellifera colonies. The UK has deployed an elaborate surveillance system that seeks to detect these mites early in any invasion to allow the best opportunity to eradicate any incursion. Effective field and laboratory protocols, capable of reliably detecting low numbers of mites, are key to the success of any intervention. Here we compared the efficacy of established field monitoring using brood removal with an uncapping fork, and brood ‘bump’ methods with novel methods for Tropilaelaps detection modified from Varroa monitoring schemes. In addition, we monitored the efficacy of the laboratory method for screening for mites in hive debris by floating mites in ethanol. Our results clearly indicated that novel methods such as uncapping infested brood with tweezers, catching mite drop using sticky traps and rolling adult bees in icing sugar were all significantly more likely to detect Tropilaelaps than existing methods such as using an uncapping fork on infested brood, or the brood ‘bump’ method. Existing laboratory protocols that sieved hive debris and then floated the mite containing layer failed to detect Tropilaelaps mites and new efficacious protocols were developed. Our results demonstrated that the national surveillance protocols for Tropilaelaps mite detection required modification to improve the early detection of this damaging invasive mite.
Author(s): Gill MC, Chuttong B, Davies P, Etheridge D, Panyaraksa L, Tomkies V, Tonge G, Budge GE
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: PLoS ONE
Year: 2024
Volume: 19
Issue: 9
Online publication date: 06/09/2024
Acceptance date: 14/08/2024
Date deposited: 17/09/2024
ISSN (electronic): 1932-6203
Publisher: Public Library of Science
URL: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301880
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0301880
Data Access Statement: The data underlying the results presented in the study are available as supplementary information.
PubMed id: 39240935
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