Evaluating the Influence of Agro-Environmental Measures on Honey Bees Based on Genetic Pollen Analysis With Nanopore Sequencing

Intensive land use is one of the main drivers contributing to the loss of pollinating insects due to the distribution of pesticides and the reduction of flower diversity. This work analyzes honey bee pollen samples taken from areas of different agricultural intensity. The aim is to classify the plant species contained in the pollen samples using DNA barcodes and nanopore sequencing in order to evaluate the influence of different agro-environmental measures on the foraging behavior of honey bees. First results concern the DNA extraction and the identification of universal primer sequences in preparation for sequencing with the MinION Mk1c from Oxford Nanopore Technologies.