Alternative treatments for Honey Bees

1.  Hiveopolis, investigates how the complex decentralised decision-making mechanism in a honeybee colony can be nudged by digital technology. Begun in 2019 and set to end in March 2024, the experiment introduces technology into three observation hives each containing 4,000 bees, by contrast to 40,000 bees for a normal colony. Within this honeybee smart home, combs have integrated temperature sensors and heating devices, allowing the bees to enjoy optimal conditions inside the colony. Since bees tend to snuggle up to warmer locations, the combs also enables us to direct them toward different areas of the hive. 2. RoboRoyale, focuses on the honeybee queen and her courtyard bees, with robots in this instance continuously monitoring and interacting with her Royal Highness. Come 2024, we will equip each hive with a group of six bee-sized robots, which will groom and feed the honeybee queen to affect the number of eggs she lays. Some of these robots will be equipped with royal jelly mic...

 Female-founded insect biotech company Dalan Animal Health, Inc. has developed the first honeybee vaccine that protects against American Foulbrood. Link to Forbes article

 Here, we compare how two different delivery systems—standard pollen patty infusion and a novel spray-based formulation—affect supplementation of a three-strain lactobacilli consortium (LX3).  Link to Paper

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 Delivery mechanism can enhance probiotic activity against honey bee pathogens Link to scientific paper

 "Bee size is not inherited and is instead determined by the size of the nesting cavity it hatches and develops in and by the amount of food left by its mother before sealing the cavity shut. Most commercial nesting boxes for bees come with cavities in one size—7 millimeters (mm) in diameter, and 100 mm to 150 mm in length. But what happens if you change the cavity size? To find out, a group of researchers at North Dakota State University experimented with nesting cavities that ranged from 4 mm to 9 mm in diameter. Their results, published in November in the Journal of Economic Entomology, show that different diameters do indeed produce different size bees and that the ideal bee size depends on what alfalfa farmers and managers want the bees to do." Link to article