Nosema survey in the Middle East and neighboring countries

Nosemosis has been a threat for honeybee colonies for a long time. However recently there is a species shift from Nosema apis to N. ceranae in European honeybees, Apis mellifera. Since then, different methodologies were developed in a short time and still advancing to discriminate two species. Using microscopic and molecular PCR detection methodologies, we surveyed around 500 colonies from 6 countries (four from Middle East and two from Europe). All available leftover bees from previous studies (ranged from 3-15 bees for the colony) were first analyzed with microscope for the presence of spores. Positive samples were than subjected to molecular analysis. For molecular analysis, first PCR-RFLP method tried and later changed to plexing of both primers to differentially amplify N. ceranae and N. apis. From our survey, We found that N. ceranae is predominated in all of the countries. One double infestation was recorded in Ýran as resulted double amplification of fragments from the same colony. Later the spores were re-checked and saw that the spores actually different for both species if they co-exist in the same slide. We got two notifiable results out of historical samples from Caucasian regions. One is that this region is more susceptible to nosemosis, during the rainy season the infestation is pretty high. And the second important finding is that N. apis is seen samples before year 2000. After year 2000, N. apis is drastically decreased and N. ceranae dominated the area.