Abstract
Agricultural economic development strongly relies on the health of pollinators including honeybees. Honeybee health is afflicted by multiple risk factors such as toxicity from pesticide application, shortage of floral resources, climate change, reduction in genetic diversity and diseases caused by various pathogenic bacteria, fungi and viruses. Controlling disease is necessary for maintaining honeybee health and this will benefit both agricultural and apicultural industries. As other insects and animals, honeybees possess a diverse set of individual or colony level disease defense mechanisms. One route by which honeybees combat diseases is through the shielding effects of gastrointestinal bacteria. Except for some transient bacteria, a set of consistent and distinctive phylotypes of bacteria colonize honeybee digestive tracts. The beneficial bacterial communities inhabiting honeybee guts play key roles in maintaining honeybee health not only by participating in nutrient processing but also by enhancing the immune system, and inhibiting the growth of pathogenic organisms with metabolic products or obstruction of pathogen colonization. Therefore, a symbiotic microbial balance in the honeybee digestive tract is critical for protecting honeybees from disease and other risks. Many researchers have emphasized the beneficial roles of gastrointestinal bacteria in sustaining honeybee health and suggest their contributions to development of novel and sustainable disease control strategies.
