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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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