@article{a01aa671839a491caff61a0c0886c2ed,
title = "Prevalence of Nosema species in a feral honey bee population: a 20-year survey",
abstract = "Nosema spp. are microsporidian pathogens of honey bees that cause nosemosis, a disease implicated in colony losses worldwide. Few studies have measured Nosema spp. levels in feral honey bees. We evaluated the presence and infection intensity of Nosema apis and Nosema ceranae in a feral Africanized honey bee population in south Texas from 1991 to 2001 and in 2013. Overall, less than 6 % of samples had Nosema spp. spores. N. apis was only found in samples from 1991 to 1995. Conversely, N. ceranae was found every year examined, ranging from 16.7 % infection in 1991 to 85.7 % in 2013. There were no effects of temperature or rainfall on infection with either species over time. This suggests that feral honey bees are relatively free of Nosema spp. compared to managed colonies. More studies on the incidence of Nosema spp. in feral honey bee populations are needed.",
author = "Juliana Rangel and Kristen Baum and Rubink, {William L.} and Coulson, {Robert N.} and Johnston, {J. Spencer} and Traver, {Brenna E.}",
note = "Funding Information: We thank Chris Garza, Kyle Harrison, Tuula Kantola, Rong Ma, Cassandra Sanabria, Elizabeth Walsh, and Michael Wong, for their help in locating and collecting honey bee samples from tree cavities at the WWR in 2013. We are also grateful to Dr. Maria Tchakerian and Tuula Kantola for their help in creating maps with GPS coordinates to locate tree cavities at the WWR. We thank WWR director Dr. Terry Blankenship and assistant director Dr. Selma Glasscock for their generosity in providing lodging and logistical support to our field team. We thank Grace Mulholland for her technical assistance during the molecular analysis of samples. This project was funded in part by a startup fund to J. Rangel by Texas AgriLife Research Hatch Project TEX09557, and by a National Science Foundation REU-EXITE grant to C. Sanabria, E. Walsh, and M. Wong (Grant no. 1062178). Funding for B. Traver was provided by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant no. 2010-67012-19924 from the US Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2015, INRA, DIB and Springer-Verlag France.",
year = "2016",
month = jul,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1007/s13592-015-0401-y",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "47",
pages = "561--571",
journal = "Apidologie",
issn = "0044-8435",
publisher = "Springer Science + Business Media",
number = "4",
}