Honey bee population declines have been linked to multiple stressors, including reduced diet diversity and increased exposure to understudied viral pathogens. Despite interest in these factors, few experimental studies explored the interaction between diet diversity and viral infection in honey bees. Here, we used a mixture of laboratory cage and small semi-field nucleus hive experiments to determine how these factors interact. We found that high quality diets (polyfloral pollen and high quality single-source pollen) have the potential to reduce mortality in the face of infection with Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV).). There was a significant interaction between diet and virus infection on mortality, even in the presence of high virus titers, suggesting that good diets can help bees tolerate virus infection. Further, we found that extreme stress in the form of pollen starvation in conjunction with IAPV infection increase exiting behavior from small experimental hives. Finally, we showed that higher quality pollen diets have significantly higher iron and calcium content, suggesting micronutrient deficiencies could be an under explored area of bee nutrition.

Dolezal_virusnutrition data archive