title: Chronic bee paralysis virus in honeybee queens: evaluating susceptibility and infection routes.
abstract: Chronic bee paralysis virus (CBPV) is known as a disease of worker honey bees. To investigate pathogenesis of the CBPV on the queen, the sole reproductive individual in a colony, we conducted experiments regarding the susceptibility of queens to CBPV. Results from susceptibility experiment showed a similar disease progress in the queens compared to worker bees after infection. Infected queens exhibit symptoms by Day 6 post infection and virus levels reach 10¹¹ copies per head. In a transmission experiment we showed that social interactions may affect the disease progression. Queens with forced contact to symptomatic worker bees acquired an overt infection with up to 10¹¹ virus copies per head in six days. In contrast, queens in contact with symptomatic worker bees, but with a chance to receive food from healthy bees outside the cage appeared healthy. The virus loads did not exceed 10⁷ in the majority of these queens after nine days. Symptomatic worker bees may transmit sufficient active CBPV particles to the queen through trophallaxis, to cause an overt infection.
authors.affiliation: Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University, 4200 Slagelse, Denmark. e.amiri79@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Esmaeil
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Amiri
authors.affiliation: LLH Bieneninstitut Kirchhain, Erlenstr. 9, 35274 Kirchhain, Germany. Marina.Meixner@llh.hessen.de.
authors.forename: Marina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Meixner
authors.affiliation: LLH Bieneninstitut Kirchhain, Erlenstr. 9, 35274 Kirchhain, Germany. Ralph.Buechler@llh.hessen.de.
authors.forename: Ralph
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Büchler
authors.affiliation: Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University, 4200 Slagelse, Denmark. Per.Kryger@agrsci.dk.
authors.forename: Per
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kryger
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000821:virology*; D054884:Host-Pathogen Interactions; D007304:Insect Viruses / Q000502:physiology*; D012328:RNA Viruses / Q000502:physiology*