Summary: In recent years, honeybees ( Apis mellifera ) have been strangely disappearing from their hives, and strong colonies have suddenly become weak and died. The precise aetiology underlying the disappearance of the bees remains a mystery. However, during the same period, Nosema ceranae , a microsporidium of the Asian bee Apis cerana , seems to have colonized A. mellifera , and it's now frequently detected all over the world in both healthy and weak honeybee colonies. For first time, we show that natural N. ceranae infection can cause the sudden collapse of bee colonies, establishing a direct correlation between N. ceranae infection and the death of honeybee colonies under field conditions. Signs of colony weakness were not evident until the queen could no longer replace the loss of the infected bees. The long asymptomatic incubation period can explain the absence of evident symptoms prior to colony collapse. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that healthy colonies near to an infected one can also become infected, and that N. ceranae infection can be controlled with a specific antibiotic, fumagillin. Moreover, the administration of 120 mg of fumagillin has proven to eliminate the infection, but it cannot avoid reinfection after 6 months. We provide Koch's postulates between N. ceranae infection and a syndrome with a long incubation period involving continuous death of adult bees, non‐stop brood rearing by the bees and colony loss in winter or early spring despite the presence of sufficient remaining pollen and honey.

Summary: Honeybee colony collapse is a sanitary and ecological worldwide problem. The features of this syndrome are an unexplained disappearance of adult bees, a lack of brood attention, reduced colony strength, and heavy winter mortality without any previous evident pathological disturbances. To date there has not been a consensus about its origins. This report describes the clinical features of two professional bee‐keepers affecting by this syndrome. Anamnesis, clinical examination and analyses support that the depopulation in both cases was due to the infection by Nosema ceranae ( Microsporidia ), an emerging pathogen of Apis mellifera . No other significant pathogens or pesticides (neonicotinoids) were detected and the bees had not been foraging in corn or sunflower crops. The treatment with fumagillin avoided the loss of surviving weak colonies. This is the first case report of honeybee colony collapse due to N. ceranae in professional apiaries in field conditions reported worldwide.

The main goal of this article is to present an overview of the analytical methodologies employed in recent years (2015-2021) to determine several honey constituents, and, specifically, those with health-promoting effects and nutritional value, like phenolic compounds, sugars, amino acids and proteins, vitamins, lipids, minerals, and organic acids. The review is structured according to the different families of compounds, and they will be discussed along with the main extraction and analytical techniques used for their determination. Phenolic compounds, sugars and amino acids have been the main compounds determined in honey. The analytical methods (sample treatment and determination techniques) are strongly dependent on the compound. Nevertheless, it can be concluded that high-performance liquid chromatography was predominantly selected for determining honey constituents; while, in relation to the sample treatment, the preferred option was a dilution of the honey with water or a buffer.