General Introductory Text Providing Background Information for the Chapters of the Terrestrial Animal Health Code on Diseases of Bees

Veterinarians usually deal with different vertebrate species, species that do not differ greatly amongst themselves in their bodily functions but that do differ hugely from insects in their anatomy and morphology. Although the individual honey bee exhibits all essential bodily functions, it is unable to survive alone. It is one among thousands of individuals within a highly complex society: the bee colony. Depending on the season, a bee colony consists of 10,000 to 50,000 infertile worker bees, one sexually mature female (the queen) and, in spring and summer, some additional male reproductive (the drones). As honey bees can only exist as a colony, from the biological and veterinary–medical point of view, the colony as a whole is regarded as the animal and the apiary (i.e. a group of beehives each containing a colony) as a single epidemiological unit.