The bee louse Braula spp. had until recently a distribution coincident with its host the honey bee. The adult fly usually attaches to a worker honey bee and steals food from its mouth. However, not all worker bees carry Braula spp. and the mechanism used by Braula spp. to select hosts is not well understood. Using choice remounting bioassays and chemical analyses, we determined host selection and the cues used by B. coeca , a...

Although pollinator declines are a global biodiversity threat, the demography of the western honeybee ( Apis mellifera ) has not been considered by conservationists because it is biased by the activity of beekeepers. To fill this gap in pollinator decline censuses and to provide a broad picture of the current status of honeybees across their natural range, we used microsatellite genetic markers to estimate colony densities and...