Fuente: PubMed "apis cerana" J Invertebr Pathol. 2026 Apr 8;217:108621. doi: 10.1016/j.jip.2026.108621. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTNosema ceranae, a fungal pathogen that infects honey bees' midgut epithelial cells, is known to impact honey bees negatively in many aspects. Given that this pathogen changes honey bee physiology and causes a higher hunger status, we hypothesized that it may negatively impact the flight ability in honey bees. We fed newly emerged workers and virgin queens with 100,000 N. ceranae spores, let the bees age for 10 days, then tested their flight ability using flight mills. We found that the flight duration and distance of worker bees were significantly reduced by N. ceranae infection with a decrease of 38.95 % in duration and a decrease of 35.72 % in distance compared to the uninfected control. Nosema-infected honey bee queens showed a very similar pattern, with flight duration reduced by 37.99 % and distance by 35.72 % compared to the control. The infection of N. ceranae also affected the other measurements of flight behavior, such as maximum flight distance among all flights (UD max), maximum flight duration among all flights (UT max) and maximum velocity (V max). Only the mean velocity was not impacted in both castes. These findings gave the first direct proof that N. ceranae can adversely affect honey bee flight abilities. Such effects may negatively impact success of both foraging and homing in workers, and mating success and/or quality in queens. These traits play important roles for regular honey bee colony function and their ecological services, yet these effects have not been considered previously. Our study thus highlights the importance of multiple harmful effects a pathogen may have on honey bee colony performance.PMID:41962859 | DOI:10.1016/j.jip.2026.108621