Joachim Rodrigues De Miranda

I am a primarily a research scientist, investigating a range of topics related to bee health, the adaptive mechanisms bees use to overcome health challenges posed by their environments, and possible solutions to improve the prospects for wild and managed bees in natural and cultivated landscapes. I also teach in several courses and am actively engaged with scientists, stakeholders and end-users world-wide, through various networks and collaborative research ventures. 

My research concerns bee health, which is a broad subject covering a diverse range of themes, methodologies and research approaches, ranging from molecular and subcellular pathogen-host interactions through organismal, behavioural and social adaptations to bee parasites and pathogens, to landscape-level, biogeographic and climatic level effects on bee health and productivity. 

Bee Health & OneHealth:

Zooming out, bee health is a critical component of the OneHealth concept, which emphasizes the interdependency of plant, animal, environmental and human health. Zooming in, bee health is defined by how bees employ different adaptive mechanisms in response to various physical, chemical and biological stressors. My main focus is on biological stressors, primarily the parasites and pathogens of bees. 

Bee Disease Ecology:

One major research theme is the distribution and transmission of pathogens within and between bee species; the effect of this on bee health, reproduction and diversity, and the extent to which this can be influenced (positively or negatively) by other environmental factors and human activity. 

Bee Disease Adaptive Mechanisms:

Bees can avail themselves of a range of behavioural, organizational, physiological, molecular and genetic-genomic mechanisms to either lower the level (resistance) or the effects (tolerance) of parasites and pathogens. Social immunity is a hugely powerful and flexible additional layer of adaptive mechanisms that is only available to bees that live in large communities, such as honey bees and bumblebees. A lot of our current research involves the triggers and behavioural mechanisms underlying selective removal of diseased bees from a colony, in which viruses paradoxically may fulfill a beneficial role. 

Virus Ecology & Evolution:

A niche research interest concerns the adaptative perspective and options for the bee viruses to the challenges posed by their host(s) in various contexts. Of all the participants in bee health and pathology, viruses have by far the greatest adaptive potential, with often radically different adaptive-evolutionary strategies at different levels of organization, all of which is effected in real-time through a relatively small, efficient and easily characterised genome.  

One of my ambitions is to develop bee-collected pollen as a non-lethal substrate for multiple environmental and biodiversity monitoring goals, including landscape chemical and microbial contamination, pollinator pesticide exposure risk, landscape floral composition, bee nutritional sufficiency and plant population genomic viability and change.

The main idea is to employ bees (wild or sentinel) as superior, more comprehensive, cost-effective and bee-centric biomonitors of landscape contamination and change than current methods. 

I currently teach in two courses: "Bees, Beekeeping and Pollination" (BI1320) which runs every year during May, where I cover the pathogens, parasites and pests of honeybees and their colonies, and "Molecular and Microbial Ecology" (BI1438) which runs between Januray and March, where I cover the bee perspective of animal-microbe interactions, focusing mostly on the beneficial bacterial gut microbiome and intestinal pathogens, as well as occasionally presenting in the "meet the author" section, where I delve more deeply into my own research with the students. 

I have previously also taught in "Writing Scientific Papers" (PNG0086), where we dissect the intricacies and hurdles of the publishing world, and also occasionally teach an ad hoc guest lecture in courses at other universities.

I enjoy teaching, especially the interaction and feedback with the students. I always have plenty of scope for students to participate in my research, either as part of their course requirements or as research assistants.     

I received a BSc in Biology in 1983 from the University of Birmingham, followed by a PhD in Genetics in 1987 from the University of Liverpool. I then embarked on a bunch of PostDoc and researching adventures around the world before landing in Sweden in 2005.

At SLU I finally also acquired a series of proper pedagogic qualifications: “Teaching in Higher Education, Basic Course” in 2010, “Kurs i forskarhandledning” in 2011, “Betygskurs Workshop” in 2013 and “How can we use learning outcomes in research education?” in 2018. 

It is hard to choose favourites, all publications are special in their own way. However, some of the currently most relevant ones are:

Bee Health in Agricultural Landscapes:

Tourbez et al. (2025) Variation in the pollen diet of managed bee species across European agroecosystems. 

Frizzera et al. (2024) Assessing lethal and sublethal effects of pesticides on honey bees in a multifactorial context. 

Laurent et al. (2024) Novel indices reveal that pollinator exposure to pesticides varies across biological compartments and crop surroundings.

Nicholson et al. (2024) Pesticide use negatively affects bumble bees across European landscapes.

Nicholson et al. (2024) Landscapes of risk: A comparative analysis of landscape metrics for the ecotoxicological assessment of pesticide risk to bees.

Babin et al. (2024) Distribution of infectious and parasitic agents among three sentinel bee species across European agricultural landscapes.

Knapp et al. (2023) Ecological traits interact with landscape context to determine bees’ pesticide risk.

Bee Adaptative Mechanisms & Genomics:

Eynard et al. (2025) Sequence-based multi ancestry association study reveals the polygenic architecture of Varroa destructor resistance in the honey bee Apis mellifera.  

Svobodová et al. (2023) Gut microbiota assembly of Gotland varroa-surviving honey bees excludes major viral pathogens. 

Scaramella et al. (2023) Host brood traits, independent of adult behaviours, reduce Varroa destructor mite reproduction in resistant honeybee populations.

Kardum Hjort et al. (2022) Genomic divergence and a lack of recent introgression between commercial and wild bumblebees (Bombus terrestris). 

Thaduri et al. (2021) Global similarity, and some key differences, in the metagenomes of Swedish varroa-surviving and varroa-susceptible honeybees. 

Locke et al. (2021) Adapted tolerance to virus infections in four geographically distinct Varroa destructor-resistant honeybee populations. 

Oddie et al. (2018) Rapid parallel evolution overcomes global honey bee parasite. 

Virus Ecology & Evolution:

Lopes et al. (2024) Origins, diversity, and adaptive evolution of DWV in the honey bees of the Azores: the impact of the invasive mite Varroa destructor. 

Lopes et al. (2024) Varroa destructor shapes the unique viral landscapes of the honey bee populations of the Azores archipelago. 

Doublet et al. (2024) Shift in virus composition in honeybees (Apis mellifera) following worldwide invasion by the parasitic mite and virus vector Varroa destructor.

de Miranda et al. (2022) Cold case: The disappearance of Egypt bee virus, a fourth distinct master strain of deformed wing virus linked to honeybee mortality in 1970’s Egypt. 

Piot et al. (2022) Honey bees and climate explain viral prevalence in wild bee communities on a continental scale.

Yañez et al. (2020) The honeybee (Apis mellifera) developmental state shapes the genetic composition of the deformed wing virus-A quasispecies during serial transmission.

Pollinator Ecology & Biodiversity:

Bottero et al. (2023) Impact of landscape configuration and composition on pollinator communities across different European biogeographic regions. 

Leclercq et al. (2023) Global taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic biogeography of bees in apple orchards. 

Reviews-Methods:

Traynor et al. (2020) Varroa destructor: A complex parasite, crippling honeybees worldwide. 

Yañez et al. (2020) Bee viruses: Routes of infection in Hymenoptera. 

Beaurepaire et al. (2020) Diversity and global distribution of viruses of the western honey bee, Apis mellifera.  

de Miranda JR et al. (2013) Standard methods for virus research in Apis mellifera.  

For the full-and-up-to-date publication list, check my GoogleScholar page.