SkandicBuzz: Do imported commercial bumblebees affect the disease profile of wild Swedish bumblebees?

Wild bees are critically important for both efficient crop pollination and the preservation of wild floral biodiversity, through the pollination services they provide.

One of the main threats to wild bee health and diversity are pathogens and diseases, many of which are shared between multiple bee species.

One of the main questions in bee disease ecology is therefore whether the increasing use of domesticated bees for crop pollination represents a health threat to wild bees.

In this project we use domesticated bumblebee colonies as drivers or sentinels for the transmission and accumulation of endemic or novel pathogens in wild bumblebees in semi-natural and agricultural habitats.

We determine whether pathogen prevalence and amount in wild bumblebees is modulated by a range of biological, climatic, landscape and nutritional factors relevant to bee health and pathology, as well as the presence of commercial bumblebee colonies, using both probabilistic risk assessment models, and genetic tools to trace pathogen origin and transmission routes.

The project uses data and samples from a large landscape-level project in Skåne, supplemented by a new experimental landscape study to explore the interaction between nutrition, foraging and three different mechanisms for pathogen transmission and accumulation in bumblebees through one season.

The questions asked are of both scientific and practical relevance and of great interest to both stakeholders and the general public.