Hi all
 
I live near a railway line and have always marvelled at how the
herbicides sprayed to kill grass and stuff on the sidelines never
kills the lucerne(alfalfa) that has grown there as a result of seeds
spilling of fodder being railed around.
 
It turns out the the genes for resistance to herbicides have been
cloned into many plants (i don't know if this alfalfa is of such a
variety but it certainly is tough). As a result framers can spray
herbicides on their crops to kill weeds.
 
Now my question is, has this cloning been done on bees? It seems it
would be quite easy say to breed drosophila (fruit flies) in the
presence of various common pesticides, and seeing as the drosophila
genome is as far as I know sequenced, to find out which genes have
mutated to give the resistance and cut them out and put them into one
of the sections of the A.m genome that have been sequenced. (so that
it is put somewhere that will not break one of the important genes in
the host).
 
Then theoretically if everything goes right one would be able to
produce huge numbers of cloned bees with pesticide resistance with no
real danger of it ever being a bad move as bees live in single
colonies and the normal methods for exterminating them do not of
neccesity need conventional pesticides - ie can gas them. (It would
be bad to put the same genes into say a flie as pesticides are useful
in killing flies which lay eggs all over the place and don't make
hives - wow imagine that - funnycomb)
 
If one put in such genes for resistance it would mean that of
neccesity they would have to be able to metabolise the poisons as
well, as that genes would code for the enzymes to do that -  in other
words it would increase the safety of the honey being sold as well.
If it did not, at least it would be useful for pollination.
 
Is such research being done??
 
Just a thought.
 
Keep well
 
Garth
 
---
Garth Cambray       Kamdini Apiaries
15 Park Road        Apis melifera capensis
Grahamstown         800mm annual precipitation
6139
Eastern Cape
South Africa               Phone 27-0461-311663
 
3rd year Biochemistry/Microbiology    Rhodes University
In general, generalisations are bad.
Interests: Flii's and Bees.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this post in no way
reflect those of Rhodes University.