"Nayyera Haq (202) 720-4623
Sandy Miller Hays (301) 504-1636
AGRICULURE SECRETARY VILSACK AND FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA
HIGHLIGHT HEALTHY EATING
White House Garden to Receive USDA-Developed Honey Bees
WASHINGTON, April 9, 2009 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack joined
First Lady Michelle Obama and a group of 5th graders on the South Lawn
of the White House today to talk about healthy eating, the availability
of locally grown fruits and vegetables, and bees.
“Growing your own fruits and vegetables is one of the best ways to have
healthy food,” Vilsack said. “Working in a garden is a great way to
stay physically active and maintain a healthy body. And the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) is helping schools make sure that every
student in America has a healthy and nutritious lunch to eat at school.”
This July, USDA will be providing two types of parasite-resistant honey
bees developed by USDA scientists to pollinate the plants in the new
White House garden this summer. Both of these bees are rapidly gaining
in popularity with bee keepers.
Honey bees enhance any garden, because they increase the yields of
plants that require pollination, they produce honey, and they are one of
Nature's most fascinating creatures to observe. Unfortunately,
parasitic mites cause serious health problems for most varieties of
honey bees, and many beekeepers must use pesticides to combat the mites
in the hives. But the USDA-developed bees are mite-resistant, offering
a more natural, organic alternative for the White House garden.
Honey bees are crucial to American agriculture, adding some $15 billion
in value in the nation's crops, particularly specialty crops such as
almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables. In California,
the almond crop alone uses 1.3 million colonies of bees, approximately
one half of all honey bees in the United States, and this need is
projected to grow to 1.5 million colonies by 2010.
Scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), USDA's
principal intramural scientific research agency, developed the two types
of mite-resistant honey bees. One type is highly resistant to the
parasitic mite Varroa destructor, commonly known as the varroa mite. The
bees have a trait called "varroa-sensitive hygiene" which prompts the
worker bees to detect and remove infested bees from the nest,
eliminating the need for chemical help to control the mites.
The second type of mite-resistant honey bees is based on a strain of
honey bees from Russia which are naturally resistant not only to varroa
mites, but also to tracheal mites, which infest the breathing tubes of
the bees. These bees are also highly tolerant of cold weather and
require less artificial feeding than typical honey bees.
The Russian bees were brought to the United States by Thomas Rinderer,
research leader at ARS' Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics and Physiology
Research Unit at Baton Rouge, La., where studies have been under way on
the bees since the mid-1990s. Rinderer and other ARS scientists will
collaborate with White House staff on installation of the USDA bees in
the White House garden.
For the past eight years, breeder queens of the Russian-derived and
varroa-sensitive hygienic bees have been released to the beekeeping
industry. In 2008, a breeders' group called the Russian Honeybee
Breeders Association, Inc., was formed to supply the Russian-derived
queens throughout the U.S. beekeeping industry, and demand is
outstripping supply.
Both types of mite-resistant USDA bees are good pollinators and easy to
keep alive because of their hardiness, thus helping ensure the success
of the new White House garden."
Harper's Honey Farm
Charles Harper
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(337) 298 6261
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