ABSTRACT
Bees carry a diverse assemblage of microbes, mostly bacteria and fungi. Most microbes are commensals or even beneficial to the colony and few are pathogenic. Their role is to inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria and fungi, aid in food digestion and food store preservation, facilitate gene expression, and affect colony-level traits such as social immunity. This chapter summarizes the role of beneficial microbes, showing their importance for maintaining colony health, and discusses current molecular and metagenomic techniques (cf. sequence-based analysis of DNA and 16S rRNA) and fi ndings that have expanded our knowledge about the complexity of the microbiome related to honey bees, their colonies, and community function. Of interest is that the current Human Microbiome Project (HMP) and questions related to host–microbe interactions could benefi t microbiome analysis of honey bees. These studies reveal the significance of microbes in the health of all organisms and clearly indicate that optimum health depends on maintaining conditions that encourage microbial growth.
