The present invention relates to a method for increasing the tolerance of a honeybee to a disease caused by a bee pathogen, comprising feeding the bee an effective amount of a bee-ingestible composition comprising an isolated double stranded ribonucleic acid (dsRNA) comprising an RNA sequence complementary to a nucleic acid comprising a nucleotide sequence that is highly homologous to a nucleotide sequence of at least one bee pathogen, thereby increasing the tolerance of the honeybee to the disease.
