Molecular Detection of Honey Bee Pathogenic Microbes: Recent Advances and Future Perspective

Microbes, including bacteria and viruses, are the main threats to the health of honey bee colonies, and cause great losses to beekeepers. Rapid and accurate diagnosis is the key to controlling and eliminating honey bee diseases, and preventing them from spreading and causing an outbreak. This review summarizes recent advances in techniques to detect honey bee diseases, including traditional methods such as polymerase chain reaction, and next-generation sequencing methods, and how they are applied in the diagnosis and management of such diseases. It also discusses how these methods have revolutionized disease detection, and presents the future directions in the field of clinical diagnostics.