The Honey Bee Body Surface as a Microbial Hub: Connectivity Shaped by Monoculture vs. Polyculture Farming

Simple Summary Honey bees are not only important pollinators but also bioindicator species, one key factor being that their microbial communities reflect habitat quality and agricultural practices. This study explored how growing single crops (monoculture) versus multiple crops (polyculture) affects the microbial diversity and networks associated with honey bees. Researchers analyzed microbial communities from flowers, pollen, nectar, honey bees, and hives across three types of farms: a rape monoculture, a pear monoculture, and a polyculture system. We found that monoculture farming reduces microbial diversity, which can negatively affect honey bee health, while polyculture farming supports diverse and interconnected microbial communities that benefit both honey bees and the environment. These findings emphasize the need for sustainable farming practices to protect honey bee health, maintain biodiversity, and support ecological and agricultural stability.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  Insects

• Publication date

  2026-01-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3390/insects17010053PMID 41598906PMCID 12842557
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Crop Diversification for Ensuring Sustainable Agriculture, Risk Management and Food Security

  2025cited by this paper
• Responses of insect pollinators to habitat fragmentation: A global meta‐analysis

  2025cited by this paper
• Protecting Honey Bees through Microbiome Engineering.

  2025cited by this paper
• Harnessing biotechnology for bee pollinator health.

  2025cited by this paper
• Host specificity of gut microbiota associated with social bees: patterns and processes

  2025cited by this paper
• Agricultural practices and pollinators modulate the anthosphere microbiome

  2025cited by this paper
• Microbiome and floral associations of a wild bee using biodiversity survey collections.

  2024cited by this paper
• Tiny but mighty? Overview of a decade of research on nectar bacteria

  2024cited by this paper
• Distinct Communities and Differing Dispersal Routes in Bacteria and Fungi of Honey Bees, Honey, and Flowers

  2024cited by this paper
• Bacteria in Honeybee Crops Are Decoupled from Those in Floral Nectar and Bee Mouths

  2024cited by this paper
• The use of honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) as biological monitors for pathogenic bacteria and antimicrobial resistance: A systematic review.

  2023cited by this paper
• The honeybee microbiota and its impact on health and disease

  2023cited by this paper
• Pollen analysis reveals the effects of uncovered interactions, pollen‐carrying structures, and pollinator sex on the structure of wild bee–plant networks

  2023cited by this paper
• Environmental Effects on Bee Microbiota

  2023cited by this paper
• Disease management during bloom affects the floral microbiome but not pollination in a mass‐flowering crop

  2022cited by this paper
• Potential effects of nectar microbes on pollinator health

  2022cited by this paper
• The role of plant–pollinator interactions in structuring nectar microbial communities

  2021cited by this paper
• The spatial variation of soil bacterial community assembly processes affects the accuracy of source tracking in ten major Chinese cities

  2021influential reference
• Microbial Co-Occurrence in Floral Nectar Affects Metabolites and Attractiveness to a Generalist Pollinator

  2020cited by this paper
• (More than) Hitchhikers through the network: The shared microbiome of bees and flowers.

  2020cited by this paper
• FEAST: fast expectation-maximization for microbial source tracking

  2019influential reference
• Linked networks reveal dual roles of insect dispersal and species sorting for bacterial communities in flowers

  2019cited by this paper
• Division of labor in honey bee gut microbiota for plant polysaccharide digestion

  2019cited by this paper
• Genomic diversity landscape of the honey bee gut microbiota

  2019cited by this paper
• The worldwide importance of honey bees as pollinators in natural habitats

  2018cited by this paper
• Imidacloprid intensifies its impact on honeybee and bumblebee cellular immune response when challenged with LPS (lippopolysacharide) of Escherichia coli.

  2018cited by this paper
• Relevance of wild and managed bees for human well-being.

  2018cited by this paper
• The role of the gut microbiome in health and disease of adult honey bee workers.

  2018cited by this paper
• Activity of salivary glands in secreting honey‐elaborating enzymes in two subspecies of honeybee (Apis mellifera L)

  2017cited by this paper
• Dynamic microbiome evolution in social bees

  2017cited by this paper
• Safeguarding pollinators and their values to human well-being

  2016cited by this paper
• Nectar microbes can reduce secondary metabolites in nectar and alter effects on nectar consumption by pollinators.

  2016cited by this paper
• The Bee Microbiome: Impact on Bee Health and Model for Evolution and Ecology of Host-Microbe Interactions

  2016cited by this paper
• Gut microbial communities of social bees

  2016cited by this paper
• Bee declines driven by combined stress from parasites, pesticides, and lack of flowers

  2015cited by this paper
• Microhabitat heterogeneity across leaves and flower organs promotes bacterial diversity.

  2015cited by this paper
• Microbial communities on flower surfaces act as signatures of pollinator visitation

  2015cited by this paper
• Gephi: An Open Source Software for Exploring and Manipulating Networks

  2009influential reference
• A meta-analysis of bees' responses to anthropogenic disturbance.

  2009cited by this paper
• Bacterial Probiotics Induce an Immune Response in the Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

  2004cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.