Alternative treatments for Honey Bees

 In Slovenia and around the world, conservationists try — and mostly fail — to combat the widespread belief that honey bees are in danger. Very interesting article! Link to Article

 Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists are studying how pollen diversity affects the nutritional quality of honeybee diets, including asking foundational questions about how nutrition can sustain healthier colonies. The four-year study is funded by a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture. It will be conducted by co-principal investigators Dr. Juliana Rangel and Dr. Spencer Behmer, both professors in the Department of Entomology within the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The project is exploring honeybee nutrition across multiple landscapes and will provide a multidimensional analysis of pollen as a nutritional resource. It will also examine how bees regulate the collection and consumption of pollen. The research could provide insights that will guide beekeepers, traditional agricultural methods, and urban/suburban development planning in ways that impact food production, ecosystem health and ov...

 Under the supervision of Professor Phil Lester, they’ve been working with US biotechnology company Greenlight Biosciences to investigate how their new treatment for varroa mites works.   The treatment is based on a technique called RNA interference. An interesting bio-hack that researchers have figured out is how they turn a natural virus defence mechanism in the cell against one of the mite’s vital proteins.   Greenlight Biosciences were able to identify a working treatment that reduced mite numbers in field trials in the states but turned to the New Zealand researchers for help in uncovering exactly how it works.   Link to Article

 Quote: Dalan Animal Health, Inc., the biotech company specializing in insect health, recently announced that it has been included in the 2023 Fast Company Next Big Thing in Tech list in recognition of its innovative animal health solution, a the world’s first vaccine to protect honeybees against American Foulbrood, a devastating disease that weakens and kills honeybee colonies globally, compromising our global food supply.  Link to Article

 This is interesting Link to article

 Quote: However, my study found cluster mantles act more like a heatsink, decreasing insulation. Clustering is not a wrapping of a thick blanket to keep warm, but more like a desperate struggle to crowd closer to the “fire” or die. The only upside is that the mantle helps keep the bees near the outside alive. As the temperature outside the hive falls, bees around the mantle go into hypothermic shutdown and stop producing heat. The mantle compresses as the bees try to stay above 10°C. The mantle bees getting closer together increases the thermal conductivity between them and decreases the insulation. Heat will always try to move from a warmer region to a colder one. The rate of heat flow from the core bees to the mantle bees increases, keeping those bees on the outside of the mantle at 10°C (hopefully). Think of a down jacket – it’s the air gap between the feathers that help keeps the wearer warm. Honeybee clusters are similar to the action of compressing a down jacket, whereby the ...

 “This new research indicates that rather than being benign, clustering is a survival behavior in response to an existential threat — resulting in increased stress due to cold and exertion. Some honeybees may even eat their own young to survive.” Mr. Mitchell, who also has a Physics BSc, Microelectronics MSc and worked in spacecraft ground control software, said he believed misconceptions around clustering had, in part, arisen because the creatures’ overwintering behavior was dominated by observations in thin (19mm) wooden hives, with very different thermal properties to their natural habitat of thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows. He said those long-held beliefs have encouraged enforced clustering, by beekeepers’ dominant use of what he labels “inadequately insulated hives” and, in North America, refrigeration. This is often seen as a benign or even a necessary process, with beekeeping and academic research considering these conditions of extreme heat loss as natural and normal. He ...

 The project is supported by a U.S. Department of Agriculture pre-doctoral fellowship  titled “Optimizing Macronutrient Contents in the Honeybee Diet as a Mechanism for Pathogen Defense.” To prevent future managed colony losses, his team will look for ways to strengthen bee colony immunity to disease pathogens by feeding them more nutritious diets. Link to article

 UT researchers modified the bacteria found in the gut of honey bees to protect the bees from common parasite Nosema, according to a study released June 12. Published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, four authors released their report of the research that stated the engineered gut bacteria could be passed from bee to bee in colonies and help eliminate the threat of Nosema among these colonies. Link to Article

 An analysis of beeswax in managed honeybee hives in New York finds a wide variety of insecticide, herbicide and fungicide residues, exposing current and future generations of bees to long-term toxicity. Link to Article

 Herein, we provide an in-depth review of the components of IPM in a Varroa control context. These include determining economic thresholds for the mite, identification of and monitoring for Varroa, prevention strategies, and risk conscious treatments. Furthermore, we provide a detailed review of cultural, mechanical, biological, and chemical control strategies, both longstanding and emerging, used against Varroa globally. For each control type, we describe all available treatments, their efficacies against Varroa as described in the primary scientific literature, and the obstacles to their adoption. Link to Paper

 During the cold season, about 1100 naturally varroa infested colonies were treated with solutions having different OA and sugar concentrations. Either OA or sugar concentration played an influence on the mite mortality. The efficacy was usually higher than 90% when the most concentrated solution (4,2% OA; 60% sugar) was used. Link to Study

 West Virginia University Abstract: The 50% formic acid fumigator (FAF) for varroa mite control was developed as part of a SARE grant (1999 to 2001). The fumigator was evaluated for five years on 123 colonies in five bee yards in Connecticut, Maryland and West Virginia. Treatments eliminated all mites on adult bees and 90 to 95% of mites in sealed brood cells. Very few brood or new young adult bees were injured by the treatment. The fumigator is a simple design and the overall cost of treatment is about $1.00 per hive or less. The 50% FAF was less toxic to bees compared to other treatments using 65%. 80% or 90 % formic acid (FA). The fumigator was applied for 18-24 hours, when ambient temperatures were between 10-30° C. In the USA, one treatment in mid-August to mid-September was effective and usually all that was required each year. The 50% FAF used with other essential oil treatments including salt-grease patties with wintergreen, feeding 1:1 syrup with Honey-B-Healthy7 (spearmin...

  ATHENS, Ga.--( BUSINESS WIRE )-- Dalan Animal Health, Inc.   (“Dalan”), the biotech company pioneering insect health with the world’s first honey bee vaccine, is proud to announce its first product shipment to a commercial beekeeper. The shipment is for Trevor Tauzer of   Tauzer Apiaries   in California and contains 500 doses, potentially protecting 25 million bees at an average of 50,000 bees per hive. “We are excited about the arrival of Dalan's honey bee vaccine. This innovative solution will help honeybees prevent infection, avoid treatments, and focus on other crucial aspects of maintaining our bee's health”. - Trevor Tauzer of Tauzer Apiaries in CA This milestone follows the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) granting a  conditional license  to Dalan's first-in-class honeybee vaccine earlier this year. The vaccine is indicated to protect honeybees against the devastating American Foulbrood disease caused by the bacteria  Paenibacillus larvae...

  Link to PDF "Toward these results, it is possible that EM® {probiotic} for bees treatment will protect honeybees from herbicide glyphosate negative effects in agricultural fields by improving microbiome and immune functions.

  Link to Publication

 "In conclusion, powdered sugar treatment resulted in lower colony varroa levels in 2 of 8 (25%) separate analyses. We thus have  evidence that powdered sugar is most efficacious when it can be  applied early in the season and exploit a winter brood-free period. " Link to paper on Research Gate Link to PDF

"We recently developed a technique to remove varroa mites (Varroa destructor) from adult honey bees (Apis mellifera) using powdered sugar. Our technique requires isolating a colony’s adult bee population in a detachable box prior to powdered sugar application. We designed a detachable ‘bee-box’ that connects to the colony’s entrance and is capable of holding the adult bee population"  "We applied measured amounts of powdered sugar directly to honey bee brood combs containing eggs and larvae of known age groups. 24 h later, we compared powdered sugar-treated brood with similarly aged cohorts of immature bees that did not receive powdered sugar. Low and high doses of powdered sugar (0.3 and 0.6 g per 151.5 ± 1.0 cells, respectively) caused significant egg removal of 62.2 ± 5.1% and 86.1 ± 5.1%,respectively, when compared to eggs that received no powdered sugar (t = 16.91; df = 29; P = 0.0001). Powdered sugar had no effect on 5-day-old honey bee larvae (t = 0.74; df = 29; P...

  Honey bee colonies managed using organic methods were as healthy and productive as those managed in conventional systems, while avoiding the use of synthetic pesticides to control pests and pathogens inside the hive, according to entomologists. Link to article