Studies on the gut microbiota of healthy and nosemosis infected bees subjected to prebiotic supplementation. Apis mellifera

We investigated how the gut microbiota of European honey bee (Apis mellifera) changed under glucooligosaccharide supplementation. Previous studies demonstrated that this supplementation had a beneficial effect on bees by increasing their survival and resistance to Nosema ceranae pathogens. Bee gut samples (48) were collected from healthy and nosemosis infected bees. NGS based on the V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene was performed within the MiSeq sequencer. Further bioinformatic analyses demonstrated significant differences in the composition of the gut microbiota between the studied groups of healthy bees, in contrast to infected bees, in which supplementation did not significantly impact the gut microbiota. Supplementation with glucooligosaccharides induced alternations in the structure and composition of the gut microbiota in a group of non-infected bees, which was evident both at the phylum and at the ASV level, significantly increasing the relative abundance of Enterobacteriaceae, comparing to control group.