Component wise variance in community profiles of Apis mellifera hives

Recent studies have highlighted the importance of microbial communities associated with almost all living organisms. This is especially true in social insects as these systems are composed of a variety of complex components that are often physically separated. Hives of the honey bee, Apis mellifera, represent a collection of nutritionally diverse components which include bees, pollen, honey, propolis, comb and brood.

We used a unique hybrid of fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) and phospholipid-derived fatty acid (PLFA) analyses to produce lipid profiles on an component wise basis which can be correlated to viable microbial community membership. These lipid profiles revealed that the microbial communities associated with hives are more closely related when grouped by component rather than sample year or individual hive. This was further supported by principal component and 2-way clustering analyses which visualized grouping of lipids by similar microbial community membership. This indicates that accurate representations of the microbial communities in hives should be formulated on a component wise basis. With this is mind we generated community profiles for each component. These profiles showed that fungi comprise a significantly greater portion within each component than other taxonomic groups.  These groups were then compared across components and several were found to significantly differ. This supports the concept of individual component communities, and also highlights which taxonomic groups may play a greater role in each component. Finally, overall community membership was found to significantly vary from least to greatest in honey, comb, pupae, pollen, adults and propolis, respectively.