The honey bee is a widely managed crop pollinator that provides the agricultural industry with the sustainability and economic viability needed to satisfy the food and fiber needs of our society. Excessive exposure to apicultural pesticides is one of many factors that has been implicated in the reduced number of managed bee colonies available for crop pollination services. The goal of this study was to assess the impact of exposure to commonly used, beekeeper-applied apicultural acaricides on established biochemical indicators of bee nutrition and immunity, as well as morphological indicators of growth and development. The results described here demonstrate that exposure to tau-fluvalinate and coumaphos has an impact on 1) macronutrient indicators of bee nutrition by reducing protein and carbohydrate levels, 2) a marker of social immunity, by increasing glucose oxidase activity, and 3) morphological indicators of growth and development, by altering body weight, head width, and wing length. While more work is necessary to fully understand the broader implications of these findings, the results suggest that reduced parasite stress due to chemical interventions may be offset by nutritional and immune stress.

Honey bees are economically important pollinators of a wide variety of crops that have attracted the attention of both researchers and the public alike due to unusual declines in the numbers of managed colonies in some parts of the world. Viral infections are thought to be a significant factor contributing to these declines, but viruses have proven a challenging pathogen to study in a bee model and interactions between viruses and the bee antiviral immune response remain poorly understood. In the work described here, we have demonstrated the use of flock house virus (FHV) as a model system for virus infection in bees and revealed an important role for the regulation of the bee antiviral immune response by ATP-sensitive inwardly rectifying potassium (K_ATP) channels. We have shown that treatment with the K_ATP channel agonist pinacidil increases survival of bees while decreasing viral replication following infection with FHV, whereas treatment with the K_ATP channel antagonist tolbutamide decreases survival and increases viral replication. Our results suggest that K_ATP channels provide a significant link between cellular metabolism and the antiviral immune response in bees.