Tools are provided to assess the health status of managed honeybee colonies by facilitating further harmonisation of data collection and reporting, design of field surveys across the European Union (EU) and analysis of data on bee health. The toolbox is based on characteristics of a healthy managed honeybee colony: an adequate size, demographic structure and behaviour; an adequate production of bee products (both in relation to the annual life cycle of the colony and the geographical location); and provision of pollination services. The attributes ‘queen presence and performance’, ‘demography of the colony’, ‘in-hive products’ and ‘disease, infection and infestation’ could be directly measured in field conditions across the EU, whereas ‘behaviour and physiology’ is mainly assessed through experimental studies. Analysing the resource providing unit, in particular land cover/use, of a honeybee colony is very important when assessing its health status, but tools are currently lacking that could be used at apiary level in field surveys across the EU. Data on ‘beekeeping management practices’ and ‘environmental drivers’ can be collected via questionnaires and available databases, respectively. The capacity to provide pollination services is regarded as an indication of a healthy colony, but it is assessed only in relation to the provision of honey because technical limitations hamper the assessment of pollination as regulating service (e.g. to pollinate wild plants) in field surveys across the EU. Integrating multiple attributes of honeybee health, for instance, via a Health Status Index, is required to support a holistic assessment. Examples are provided on how the toolbox could be used by different stakeholders. Continued interaction between the Member State organisations, the EU Reference Laboratory and EFSA is required to further validate methods and facilitate the efficient use of precise and accurate bee health data that are collected by many initiatives throughout the EU.

Social insects have many defence mechanisms against pests and pathogens. One of these is hygienic behaviour, which has been studied in detail in the honey bee, Apis mellifera. Hygienic honey bee workers remove dead and diseased larvae and pupae from sealed brood cells, thereby reducing disease transfer within the colony. Stingless bees, Meliponini, also rear broods in sealed cells. We investigated hygienic behaviour in three species of Brazilian stingless bees (Melipona scutellaris, Scaptotrigona depilis, Tetragonisca angustula) in response to freeze-killed brood. All three species had high mean levels of freeze-killed brood removal after 48 h ∼99% in M. scutellaris, 80% in S. depilis and 62% in T. angustula (N=8 colonies per species; three trials per colony). These levels are greater than in unselected honey bee populations, ∼46%. In S. depilis there was also considerable intercolony variation, ranging from 27% to 100% removal after 2 days. Interestingly, in the S. depilis colony with the slowest removal of freeze-killed brood, 15% of the adult bees emerging from their cells had shrivelled wings indicating a disease or disorder, which is as yet unidentified. Although the gross symptoms resembled the effects of deformed wing virus in the honey bee, this virus was not detected in the samples. When brood comb from the diseased colony was introduced to the other S. depilis colonies, there was a significant negative correlation between freeze-killed brood removal and the emergence of deformed worker bees (P=0.001), and a positive correlation with the cleaning out of brood cells (P=0.0008). This shows that the more hygienic colonies were detecting and removing unhealthy brood prior to adult emergence. Our results indicate that hygienic behaviour may play an important role in colony health in stingless bees. The low levels of disease normally seen in stingless bees may be because they have effective mechanisms of disease management, not because they lack diseases.