Honey bee is vital for pollination and ecological services, boosting crops productivity in terms of quality and quantity and production of colony products: wax, royal jelly, bee venom, honey, pollen and propolis. Honey bees are most important plant pollinators and almost one third of diet depends on bee’s pollination, worth billions of dollars. Hence the role that honey bees have in environment and their economic importance in food production, their health is of dominant significance. Honey bees can be infected by various pathogens like: viruses, bacteria, fungi, or infested by parasitic mites. At least more than 20 viruses have been identified to infect honey bees worldwide, generally from Dicistroviridae as well as Iflaviridae families, like ABPV (Acute Bee Paralysis Virus), BQCV (Black Queen Cell Virus), KBV (Kashmir Bee Virus), SBV (Sacbrood Virus), CBPV (Chronic bee paralysis virus), SBPV (Slow Bee Paralysis Virus) along with IAPV (Israeli acute paralysis virus), and DWV (Deformed Wing Virus) are prominent and cause infections harmful for honey bee colonies health. This issue about honey bee viruses demonstrates remarkably how diverse this field is, and considerable work has to be done to get a comprehensive interpretation of the bee virology.

蜜蜂对于授粉和生态服务至关重要，可以提高农作物的质量和数量以及蜂群产品的产量：蜡、蜂王浆、蜂毒、蜂蜜、花粉和蜂胶。蜜蜂是最重要的植物授粉媒介，几乎三分之一的饮食依赖于蜜蜂授粉，价值数十亿美元。因此，蜜蜂在环境中的作用及其在粮食生产中的经济重要性，其健康具有重要意义。蜜蜂可能会被各种病原体感染，例如：病毒、细菌、真菌，或被寄生螨虫感染。全世界至少有 20 多种病毒已被确定感染蜜蜂，通常来自双顺反子病毒科和黄蜂病毒科，如 ABPV（急性蜜蜂麻痹病毒）、BQCV（黑蜂王细胞病毒）、KBV（克什米尔蜜蜂病毒）、SBV（囊巢病毒（Sacbrood Virus）、CBPV（慢性蜜蜂麻痹病毒）、SBPV（慢蜂麻痹病毒）以及 IAPV（以色列急性麻痹病毒）和 DWV（变形翅病毒）是常见的病毒，会导致对蜂群健康有害的感染。本期有关蜜蜂病毒的问题显着地表明了该领域的多样性，并且需要做大量的工作才能对蜜蜂病毒学进行全面的解释。