Beneficial microorganisms for honey bees health

Honeybees (Apis mellifera and other species) are considered as the most economically important insect species for humans and the ecosystems, not only as honey producers but also and especially as pollinators of agricultural, horticultural crops and wild plants (approximately 90 different farm-grown foods, including many fruits and nuts, depend on honeybees), contributing at the pollination of 35% of the global food production. Unfortunately, honeybee decline started about 30 years ago, with the arrival from Asia of the bee mite Varroa destructor. Since then, honeybees have been damaged by different kinds of biotic and abiotic stressor factors, cumulating any kind of damages, and posing a serious threat to the agricultural field. Many scientists agree that bee decline is a multifactorial process in which a mechanism seems to be more important in a given period of the year than in another, and different mechanisms may predominate in another period or in other environments. Of those multifactorial processes, leading factors are the new emergent pathogens, such as Nosema ceranae a gut pathogen causing serious threat to bees and the consequent death of the colony; Viruses such as “deformed wing virus”, “Black queen cell virus”, “chronic paralysis virus” and many others that are often over transmitted by the mite parasite Varroa destructor. Pesticides and other environmental stress factors are furthering enhancing the high pathogenicity on bees, weakening more and more the delicate beehive superorganism balance. The major science concern about the bees usually regards the study of the bee pathogens and their interaction with an increasingly anthropized environment (e.g.: pollution and sub lethal poisonings). Only few research projects (of high scientific importance) have been carried out using an approach aimed to fix the problems linked with it. Even less are the researches investigating probiotic microorganisms as growth promoter, in order to obtain a better wealth and wellbeing of the bees. In the light of these possibilities the aim of my research is the development of -environmental friendly- microbial technologies aimed to increase the health of the bees.