Drifting behaviour and colony health in social bees

Bees are important pollinators of wild and agricultural plants. Among the most important pollinators in temperate
regions are honeybees (Apis mellifera) and, in the tropics, the stingless bees or Meliponini. People keep bees in
apiaries to facilitate beekeeping and pollination. For traditional communities in the Amazon, beekeeping of native
Brazilian stingless bees is of both economic and cultural importance as bees provide food, income and medicinal
products.
Bees face a cocktail of anthropogenic stressors, including pesticides, climate change, emerging pathogens and
habitat destruction. In the long term, the interactions among these stressors can lead to high annual mortality rates
of bee colonies and, potentially, elevated risks to pollinator communities due to a spill-over of diseases from infected
hives to other hives and wild pollinators. One behaviour that is of particular interest for colony health and disease
transmission is worker "drifting", which means that bees enter the wrong hive, either by accident or to steal food sources.
The interactions between drifting and anthropogenic stressors and diseases are still poorly understood.
The aim of this PhD studentship is to study the links between drifting behaviour, the nutritional state of colonies, pesticide
exposure and pathogen infection. It will do so by studying stingless bees in the deforestation arc in the Brazilian Maranhão
region and honeybees in the UK. Four specific aims are addressed: 1) Understand the links between drifting behaviour and
diseases, 2) understand the links between drifting behaviour and pesticides, 3) understand the links between drifting
behaviour and the nutritional and foraging condition of colonies and, 4) understand the links between the spatial
arrangement of apiaries and drifting behaviour. The latter will be combined with simulation modelling to assess how the
spatial arrangement of colonies can reduce drifting and disease spread.
This project will allow the candidate to learn an exciting mix of methodological approaches and work in both Brazil, in
collaboration with the not-for-profit organisation Meli and local communities, and in the UK