This was forwarded to me by a friend on the entomo listserv. Thought it may
be of interest. Cheers, John
STORY LEAD:
Helping Honeybees Withstand Mites and Winter
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ARS News Service
Agricultural Research Service, USDA
Dennis Senft, (510) 559-6068, [log in to unmask]
May 23, 1997
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A combination of cold weather and infectious mites have decimated domestic
and wild honeybees in recent years. Some commercial beekeepers have lost
half their hives and some wild populations were hit even harder. That's not
good because the insects pollinate U.S. crops worth $10 billion annually.
Scientists with the Agricultural Research Service say getting honeybees to
build smaller cells--the six-sided cubbyholes where bees rear their young
and store honey--may help bees survive mite attack. Into hives, the
scientists placed "starter" cells smaller than those commercially used. The
bees apparently used the small cells as a blueprint, building smaller than
normal architectural units on top of them. Scientists suspect building the
smaller cells puts less stress on bees, so they can better cope with mite
infestations. In test hives infested with Varroa mites, bees in the small
cells had a 40 percent survival rate compared to zero for those in standard
size cells.
A report on the ARS studies appears in the May 1997 issue of ARS'
Agricultural Research magazine. The report can also be found on the World
Wide Web at:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/beecells0597.htm
Another way scientists could help is by locating hives of wild and domestic
bees that might have natural resistance to Varroa mites. They already have
found bees that have some resistance to tracheal mites. These two
mites are major pests of bees. Mite-resistant honeybees might form the
genetic basis for improved strains.
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Scientific contact: Eric H. Erickson, ARS Carl Hayden Bee Research
Laboratory, Tucson, Ariz., http://gears.tucson.ars.ag.gov, phone
(520)
670-6481, fax 670-6493, e-mail [log in to unmask]
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Photo in AR magazine: #k7585-1, regular and 22% smaller bee cells.
View on
WWW at http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/beecells0597.htm. Contact ARS
Photo
Unit by phone at (301) 344-2958 or e-mail to
[log in to unmask]
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This item is one of the news and feature releases and story leads
that ARS
Information distributes on weekdays to journalists on request by fax
as
well as by an Internet mailing list.
* Feedback and questions to ARS News Service via e-mail:
[log in to unmask]
* ARS Info on the World Wide Web: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is
* The ARS Information Staff is at 6303 Ivy Lane, 4th Floor, Greenbelt
MD
20770, phone (301) 344-2303, fax 344-2311.
>
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John Volpe
Dept. of Biology - Centre for Environmental Health
University of Victoria
PO Box 1700, Victoria, British Columbia, CANADA V8W 2Y2
TEL. (250) 721 7098
FAX. (250) 472 4075
[log in to unmask]
http://web.uvic.ca/~jvolpe/
Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a
meaning of which I disapprove. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
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