Honey bee hives have ‘living immune systems’ which defend against disease

Elizabeth Frost Open a honey bee hive on a warm afternoon and the first thing you’ll notice is movement.

Thousands of bees stream across the frames, tending brood, processing nectar and pollen, building wax, and maintaining the colony.

A constant hum of activity and the smell of honey fill the air.

But this bustling environment is also home to something much smaller: a vast community of bacteria and fungi.

Some are harmless.

Some are essential .

Others can cause serious disease.

For honey bees, living together in such dense numbers creates an obvious problem.

An infection that enters a colony has tens of thousands of potential hosts.

Yet healthy honey bee colonies are remarkably good at keeping harmful microbes under control.

How do they do it? Our new research , published in ISME Communications, suggests that part of the answer lies in the way the hive is organised.

Mapping the hive’s defences To understand how a colony keeps microbes under control, we first need to look at the hive as a whole.

The hive is not one place.

Thousands of hexagonal wax cells are packed into combs, serving as nurseries, pantries, and storerooms.