Sacbrood Virus: A Growing Threat to Honeybees and Wild Pollinators

Ruike Wei; Lianfei Cao; Ye Feng; Yanping Chen; Gongwen Chen; Huoqing Zheng

doi:10.3390/v14091871

Sacbrood Virus: A Growing Threat to Honeybees and Wild Pollinators

Viruses. 2022 Aug 25;14(9):1871. doi: 10.3390/v14091871.

Authors

Ruike Wei¹, Lianfei Cao², Ye Feng³, Yanping Chen⁴, Gongwen Chen¹, Huoqing Zheng¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Animal Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
² Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Science, Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou 310021, China.
³ Institute of Translational Medicine, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310058, China.
⁴ USDA-ARS Bee Research Laboratory, Beltsville, MD 20705, USA.

Abstract

Sacbrood virus (SBV) is one of the many viruses that infect both the Western honeybee (Apis mellifera) and the Eastern honeybee (Apis cerana). Recently, the interspecies transmission of SBV has been discovered, especially among wild pollinators. This newly discovered evolutionary occurrence regarding SBV indicates a much wider host range than previously believed, causing further concern about the future sustainability of agriculture and the resilience of ecosystems. Over the past few decades, vast numbers of studies have been undertaken concerning SBV infection in honeybees, and remarkable progress has been made in our understanding of the epidemiology, pathogenesis, transmission, and manifestations of SBV infection in honeybees and other pollinators. Meanwhile, some methods, including Chinese medicine, have been established to control and prevent sacbrood disease in A. cerana in Asian countries. In this review, we summarize the existing knowledge of SBV and address the gaps in the knowledge within the existing literature in the hope of providing future directions for the research and development of management strategies for controlling the spread of this deadly disease.

Keywords: diagnostics; epidemiology; etiology; pathogenesis; prevention; sacbrood virus; transmission.

Publication types

Review
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

Animals
Asia
Bees
Ecosystem*
Phylogeny
RNA Viruses*

Supplementary concepts

Sacbrood virus

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Zhejiang Science and Technology Major Program on Agricultural New Variety Breeding (2021C02068-8), the Zhejiang Collaborative Extension Plan of Major Agricultural Technologies (2021XTTGXM06), and the earmarked fund for CARS-44, a key laboratory of silkworm and bee resource utilization and innovation of Zhejiang Province (2020E10025). Yanping Chen was partially supported by the USDA-APHIS fund (22-8130-0990).