A semi-automated and high-throughput approach for the detection of honey bee viruses in bee samples

As their names suggest, honey bee viruses such as Deformed wing virus (DWV), Acute bee paralysis virus (ABPV), and Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) are etiological agents of specific diseases in honey bees. They also have been linked with the ongoing decline in honey bee populations worldwide. A rapid, simple, semi-automated, high-throughput, and cost-effective method of screening colonies for viruses would benefit bee research and the beekeeping industry. Here we describe a new approach that combines an RNA-grade liquid homogenizer followed by magnetic bead capture for total virus nucleic acid extraction. We compare it to the commonly applied nucleic acid column-based purification method and use qPCR plus Oxford Nanopore Technology sequencing to evaluate the accuracy of analytical results for both of the methods. Our results showed high reproducibility and accuracy for both of the approaches. The semi-automated method described here allows for faster screening of viral loads in units of 96 samples at a time. We developed this method to monitor viral loads in honey bee colonies but it could be easily applied for any PCR or genomic-based screening assays.