PESTS AND PATHOGENS ARE ALWAYS ON THE MOVE
We designed this website to provide information about the global distribution of pests and pathogens of the western honey bee (Apis mellifera). Information regarding the distribution of a specific pathogen or pest can be found by clicking on the Pathogen and Pests tab at the top of this page. This will take you to a table containing all the pathogens and pests known to be associated with honey bees. Clicking the name of a pest or pathogen will take you to information regarding the distribution of that organism. Clicking on MAP will take you to a downloadable PDF file that contains a world map showing the distribution of that pest or pathogen. Clicking on TABLE will take you to a table containing the countries where the organism has been found with a link to a reference noting the discovery of a pest or pathogen.
UPDATES AND USE OF INFORMATION
To assure practicality for both readers and reviewers, we adopted an interactive system whereby the maps and tables provided can be updated as needed by the author team as new information becomes available. In the future, this strategy will allow for updates to the global honey bee health status as new pests/pathogens, updated nomenclature, and other changes emerge. This also allows readers/users to provide updates to us directly, updates that can include new occurrences of a pest/pathogen in a country, errors (inclusion or omission errors) in the online tables/maps, etc.
*Please be aware that we are in a transition phase for this project. The World Honey Bee Health project is now a COLOSS Task Force. The Administrative Team is currently working to update all maps/tables on the website. Following these updates, users will be able to notify our team of any updates or errors that need to be addressed.
*Future procedure for reporting updates/errors follows:
Email [email protected] and please include the following information:
1- Your name, affiliation, and contact information (email addressed required)
2- The proposed change (omission error, inclusion error, or new country status of a disease or pest)
3- Attach a peer-reviewed manuscript or other documentation to support the change.
4- Include any other information you feel is relevant.
The submitted information will be reviewed by the Administrative Team and an amendment made to the tables and/or maps as deemed appropriate.
All tables and maps are free to download and use (they are open source). High resolution images were used to generate each map. Consequently, you can see country status by zooming into the region or country of interest if the land area is too small to see at the whole map level. All tables, maps, and the following manuscript must be cited appropriately at each use. The appropriate citation to include for maps and tables is:
Boncristiani, H., Ellis, J.D., Bustamante, T., Graham, J., Jack, C., Kimmel, C.B., Mortensen, A., Schmehl, D.R. 2021. World honey bee health: the global distribution of western honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) pests and pathogens. Bee World, 98(1): 2 – 6. https://doi.org/10.1080/0005772X.2020.1800330.