Editing Nosema apis (section)

==Symptoms==
The symptoms of ''Nosema'' are relatively nonspecific, which makes it difficult to distinguish from other [[diseases of the honeybee]]. It arises mostly in the spring after periods of bad weather, although it may also be a winter disease that is only noticed in the spring when beekeepers first inspect their hives. The female worker bees are most strongly afflicted, less so the drones. The queen bee is rarely infected since afflicted bees rarely participate in feeding the queen. The most notable symptom is [[dysentery]]. This appears as yellow stripes on the outside of the hive and in severe cases, inside the hive. Bees may be unable to fly ("crawling") due to disjointed wings.

Further symptoms include increased girth of the abdomen, missing sting reflex, and early [[supersedure|replacement]] of the queen. If the queen is infected, her ovaries degenerate and egg production drops due to atrophy of the oocytes, after which she is likely to be superseded. The disease pattern described by Higes ''et al.''. in Spain for ''N. ceranae'' is slightly different from that of ''N. apis''. The changes in the digestive system were substantially more serious than with ''N. apis'', related to particularly heavy and spacious cell lesions. Conversely, classical symptoms were missing from ''N. ceranae'', such as diarrhea, crawling, large numbers of dead bees in the apiary, etc. Bees tend to die away from the apiary, which causes a reduction in food gathered and can eventually lead to colony collapse. Ritter (CVUA Freiburg) reported symptoms can arise throughout the year from ''N. ceranae'', in contrast to ''N. apis''.<ref name=Ritter/> In the winter, some colonies died within a short time and the bees lay dead in the box (in Spain, hives usually remained empty). Whether these features are related to the new form of ''Nosema'' cannot be conclusively proven.