Honeybee nutrition might be key to healthy populations

-

 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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Research projects teaming robots and computers with 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...
Read more

Scientists breed fungus that fights Varroa mites

-
 " Washington State University entomologists joined forces with an Olympia, Wash.-based business and others in a  two-year effort  to breed a strain of  Metarhizium , a common beneficial fungus found in soils, to work against the mites. Metarhizium anisopliae  has been used for decades to combat numerous soil-dwelling pests around the world, including the sugarbeet root maggot and the Japanese beetle,  according to  the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service." " The team’s next tasks will be to develop delivery methods for beekeepers to apply the fungus in hives and get approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to use it in agriculture, according to the university." Link to article
Read more