Worth the buzzing discovery: New test points super resistant to bees, installed with colonial losses

A promising new tool for beekeepers can help fight shocking bee losses, reaching record levels last year. According to a study published on April 2 in Frontiers of Bee Science, the test mimics the pheromones emitted by a sick bee and can accurately identify colonies that are naturally resistant to multiple devastating diseases.

Schedule is not more critical. Last year, American beekeepers lost more than 55% of their custodial colonies, the highest loss rate since formally tracked in 2011.

“Beekeepers lost bees at the rate they said were unsustainable,” said Samantha Alger, director of the Vermont Bee Laboratory and lead author of the study. “In the 1980s, beekeepers lost their colonies 10-12% of the time…but now about 30-50%. Imagine that happens every year for people who are cattle or pig farmers.”

Although beekeepers manage to maintain populations by creating new colonies, the time and resources of this frozen solution are huge costs. It also increases the risk of pathogens spilling into wild bee populations, potentially threatening local pollinators.

The international research team, including scientists from Vermont, North Carolina, Mississippi and Australia, found that Ubeeo tests identified colonies that were resistant to several key threats: Varroa mites, multiple viruses, Vairimorpha (formerly Nosema) (formerly Nosema) and Chalkbrood Fungus.

How bees protect themselves

Healthy honey bee colonies naturally exhibit “hygienic behavior” – the ability to detect, fire and remove unhealthy developing bees from the beehive before the disease spreads. This socioimmune mechanism has long been seeking to reproduce harder bees.

Traditional hygienic behavior testing methods involve killing bees with liquid nitrogen and measuring how quickly workers reproduce by removing dead people. Ubeeo tests take a different approach by using synthetic versions of chemical signals naturally emitted by sick or infected bees.

“Instead of using liquid nitrogen to kill developing p and larvae, use a mixture of synthetic pheromones that mimic the same chemicals emitted through dying or sick broods,” Alger explained. “So, rather than testing the ability of bees to recognize death, you are testing the ability of bees to recognize disease, which means that the test is more selective and realistic about the bees’ experience.”

Kaira Wagoner, a research scientist at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, and study co-authors developed Ubeeo during their PhD research after identifying chemical compounds associated with unhealthy brood odors. The test was publicly obtained earlier this year through Optera, a company she co-founded.

“It’s a very young technology,” Wagner said. “We have now tested in more than 10 different countries and now have at least 5 breeding plans, so there is more data.”

Set disease resistance threshold

Studies have shown that different diseases require different levels of hygiene sensitivity. For some pathogens, only a moderate Ubeeo score is required to demonstrate resistance.

“We found that at least in this Australian dataset, they only need to achieve 13% response on Ubeeo tests to be very resistant to Chalkbrood. By comparison, the colonies need to achieve 55 or 60% response in Ubeeo tests to resist mites,” Wagoner explained. ” “The reactivity of a bee depends to a large extent on how harmful a specific disease is to brooding. Pink kills broods, so the bees don’t have to be so sensitive to detect it. ”

Perhaps the most unexpected finding was that colonies that scored high in the Ubeeo test also showed resistance to Vairimorpha, a miniature spore parasite that mainly affects adult bees rather than developing broods.

“As far as Vairimorpha is concerned, what they do is a mystery,” Alger said. “There are probably other behaviors that make the health colonies far more than we know.”

For beekeepers, the meaning is very important. By identifying and reproduction from colonies that score well in the Ubeeo test, they can reduce their dependence on chemical treatment while increasing colony survival.

“It is absolutely preferable for bees to have bees that better adapt to their disease itself rather than using chemotherapy and interventions to reduce the load on these pathogens, which of course may have a negative impact on bees,” Alger noted.

As climate change and agricultural fortification continue to stress pollinators, tools like Ubeeo provide avenues for more resilient honey bee stocks. For industries facing unprecedented challenges, this possibility offers rare hope in troubled loss statistics.