BEEHAVE: Characterizing the social immunity behaviours of honeybees for their value in sustainable beekeeping through disease resistance breeding.

The parasitic mite, Varroa destructor, is unarguably the main cause of global honeybee (Apis mellifera) colony losses and managed honeybees survive by a dependency on chemical mite-control treatments. Honeybees are social insects that rely on adult bee social immunity behaviours for defence against disease.

For example, Hygienic Behaviour (HB) removes diseased brood from the colony while Varroa-Sensitive Hygiene (VSH) specifically targets mite-infested brood.

These behaviours are popular in breeding programs but the actual extent to which they confer an advantage against varroa mite infestation is surprisingly still poorly understood.

The aim of this project is to improve our understanding of honeybee social immunity behaviours through a hypothesis-driven research program and a series of specific objectives (corresponding to chapters of a PhD thesis):comprehensively describe these behaviours in naturally selected mite-resistant honeybees compared with non-selected mite-susceptible and selectively bred VSH honeybees;critically evaluate the long-term genetic stability of these behaviours in relation to colony health dynamics,explore a higher resolution of the selection accuracy of social behaviours; andexperiment with the context dependency of these behaviours in relation to colony pathogen prevalence.The outcomes of this project will improve mite-resistant breeding efforts ultimately strengthening the sustainability of apiculture and pollination services.