A systematic meta-analysis of the efficacy of treatments for a global honey bee pathogen - the Varroa mite

Abstract

The western honey bee Apis mellifera is the world's most important managed pollinator. However, globally honey bees have been facing increasing colony losses due to a combination of stress factors. Foremost among these is the invasive mite Varroa destructor, which is the pathogen most commonly linked to colony losses. Despite intensive research focus on this problem, V. destructor management remains extremely challenging, with no definitive treatment approach. A variety of synthetic chemical, agriculturally organic chemical, biological, and physical treatments have been trialled and used in V. destructor management, each with benefits and drawbacks. Here, we carried out a first systematic meta-analysis of the comparative effectiveness of V. destructor treatment methods. We incorporated data from 138 studies from 30 countries, across five continents and found that overall, synthetic chemicals show high effectiveness as a treatment due to their ability to suppress the V. destructor mite. In our analyses of honey bee responses, there was some evidence that synthetic chemicals may have an overall negative impact on them, even while suppressing V. destructor. For improving honey bee health measures, biological treatment methods showed the most positive effect, but with a relatively low sample size. Our study highlights that there is a relative lack of studies on biological management methods, with far more focus in the literature on chemical treatments. We show that, until biological methods receive greater research attention, agriculturally organic methods likely provide the best current treatment option, because they are well studied, nearly as effective at suppressing V. destructor as synthetic chemicals, and less associated with negative impacts on honey bees. Varroa destructor remains a major threat to honey bees globally, with the last large V. destructor free zone (Australia) having now been invaded, emphasising the need to fill these knowledge gaps.