| dc.description.abstract | Honey bees are important pollinators, as they play a critical role in global agriculture.
However, during the last decade the population of honey bees has been decreasing worldwide.
As the consequences of this trend, different research fields arose trying to explain it.
The honey bees have acquired a distinct gut microbiota, where Lactobacillus kunkeei, which
have shown to be the dominating bacteria.
In this thesis different L. kunkeei strains was added to the bees diet over a set period of time,
to observe if the bacteria prolonged the bees life span. Survival analyses were applied to
interpret the results, where only 9 different strains were useful. Besides, genome diversity
among 47 different L. kunkeei strains has also been studied related to their monthly isolation
using the rep-PCR. GelCompare allowed us to differentiate among the different L. kunkeei
strains due to its electrophorese pattern.
Only on of the L. kunkeei strains isolated in September showed positive effects on the honey
bees life span. Unfortunately the remaining strains, isolated from September, late October and
November, showed none or negative effect. Furthermore, dendrogram analysis from rep-PCR
result showed nine clusters revealing variation among different L. kunkeei strains. | no_NO |
