Mixed modelling applied on American Foulbrood affecting honey bees larvae

ZUUR, AF; GENDE, LB; IENO, EN; FERNANDEZ, NJ; EGUARAS, MJ; FRITZ, R,; WALKER, N; SAVELIEV, AA,; SMITH, GM

Mixed effects models in ecology with R.

Springer

Año: 2008; p. 447 - 458

American Foulbrood (AFB) is an infectious disease affecting the larval stage of honeybees (Api smellifera), and is the most widespread and destructive of the brood diseases. The causative agent is Paenibacillus larvae, and the spore forming bacterium infects queen, drone, and worker larvae. Recently, culturing of P. larvae from adult honey bee samples has been shown to be a more sensitive tool for AFB screening compared to culturing of honey samples. When samples of adult bees are used, the detection level of P. larvae is closely linked to the distribution of spores among the bees. For this reason, we will model the density of P. larvae, with the potential explanatory variables as number of bees in the hive, presence or absence of AFB, and hive identity. In this chapter, we apply mixed modelling to honeybee data. The data are considered nested because multiple observations were taken from the same hive. A to-tal of 24 hives were sampled.