Honey bees in the United States are in decline. What scientists call Colony Collapse Disorder has wiped out about a third of U.S. beehives. EarthSky spoke to bee breeder Susan Cobey of the University of California Davis about building a better bee.
Susan Cobey focuses on breeding bees that can recognize pests and disease and remove them from the hive. Cobey said her long term plan is to enhance the honey bee gene pool.
That’s important because we’re dependent on bees for our food supply. They pollinate most of our crops – their work is worth fourteen billion dollars a year. A wider gene pool provides tools to maintain the health of the entire US population of honey bees.
Dr. Cobey does that by crossing domestic bees with European bees. Bees in Europe have always been selected for pest and disease resistance. She’s confident the bee population will eventually recover. So Cobey believes a hybrid will make a stronger bee.
EarthSky asked Cobely how you actually breed bees. She told us that it involves artificial insemination under a microscope with a very tiny syringe.
Our thanks to:
Susan Cobey
University of California,
Davis, CA
This topic not only point out a new tech but also remind human being a crisis of deminishing bees around the world. Bee decline, as a horrible phenomenon, threatens honey industry which worths forteen million dollars a year. However, by a tech, scientists make hybrid bee, this is mix European bee’s gene to American ones, providing robuster bees to resist widespreaded disease across bee hives, their communities.
The use of systemic insecticides during flowering is a serious threat for all pollinators. Genotypes of Endosulfan-tolerant Trichogramma and Chrysoperla are available in India. Honeybees have a natural tolerance for contact insecticides. I therefore feel that natural selection and heterosis can be used to protect honeybees from pest management practices during the reproductive phases of crops.
Comment
As a Sustainable Farmer, Honey bees are essential to my effort.
I would favor a LOCALIZED, TESTED and CONTROLLED hybrid, prior to release into the general population. Our Honey Bees seem to be maintaining thier hives properly, but we are aware of the disease.
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i love that bee
Colony collapse disorder is not the problem. It is a symptom of the problem. The problem is that agriculture (and all of human society for that matter) has separated itself from nature. There is no one cause for CCD. some contributors are:
The uniform shape of the cells in the universally used Langstroth hives do not allow the bees to make cells of different shapes for different uses (this is one of the main causes of mite epidemics because brood are raised in smaller cells so that the mites cannot move around in natural hives)
Bees are fed corn syrup in the winter. They have evolved for their entire history eating the nutritient rich honey and pollen. A human would not fair well either if they ate only sugar for months at a time
Commercial bees are subjected to pesticides in GM crops
Commercial bee hives infect others with any diseases they may have during the “California almond orgy” (a huge amount of bees are taken to the Almond fields in CA) the density of bee hives causes them to exchange parasites etc.
How to solve it?
Stop using monoculture
As much as possible, let the bees do it how they evolved doing it
Stop using antibiotics and other medicines in bees. BREED DISEASE RESISTANT BEES (by simply stopping the medicines, and weathering the storm, then picking up the pieces once only disease resistant bees are left) INSTEAD OF MEDICINE RESISTANT DISEASES!!!
for more information, read “Fruitless Fall”.
The decline of bee’s is actually caused by cell phone towers.
i dont really get it .. ~_^ ..
I’m recently started keeping bees and find it a wonderful thing to do. My whole reason for doing so was to try to support the Honey Bee population in my area