F. Lucas, Eduardo Insignares-Carrione*, B. Bolano and A. Kalcker
Introduction: There is a worldwide bee colony collapse, a syndrome characterized mainly by the disappearance of worker bees. It is caused by parasites such as those belonging to the genus Varroa- vector of Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) and other pathogens that affect bees, such as Nosema ceranae. The objective of this research was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of a new mixture of substances administered as feed to bees called p20, with the purpose of increasing the survival of bees affected by DWV and Nosema spp and to verify how p20 affected the presence of these pathogens in the hives.
Materials and methods: A prospective descriptive longitudinal observational study of bees with deformed wing virus and Nosema spp in hives in Garraf, Barcelona, Spain from July 2022 to July 2023 was carried out.
The research was carried out on A. mellifera species, aged between 20 and 40 days of life, of female sex, in the subspecies Iberiensis, with physiological state of adult foragers, in 20 bees per hive, examining a total of 200 bees, 20 per group. Solution p20 was administered as feed, which is a mixture of sugars with syrup of glycosylated sugars and 4.6% oxalic acid in 325 cc bags per hive. Three cycles of one bag per week were administered and consumed by the hives.
Results: Our findings suggest that hives with Nosema and deformed wings that were treated with a blend of oxalic acid in activated glycolytic solution called p20 showed an improvement in survival rate and a significant decrease in the presence of Nosema and deformed wings compared to previous winter seasons when we did not apply the substance under study. The efficacy of the p20 solution against Nosema spp. for four (4) weeks with three (3) treatments was 90.4% in total and stopped completely the new hatchings of bees with deformed wings by 100%.
HTML PDFShare this article
Veterinary Science & Technology received 4472 citations as per Google Scholar report
