It’s no secret, bees are super important.
And it’s not just for food sources; bees
also keep the health of wild ecosystems in check by pollinating wildflowers, which in
turn maintains biodiversity and a thriving terrestrial biomes. And while all bee species
are helpful pollinators, honey bees are crucial to our own food supply, pollinating close
to 90 commercially grown crops in the U.S.
But bee populations have been under extreme stresses, from pesticides to the climate crisis,
to parasites and diseases.
-We are currently losing between 30% and close to 50% of our honeybee colonies every single
year. What would be worse is to add a parasite
that we know has a dramatic impact on honey bees.
-Unfortunately, that’s exactly the situation all bees are facing. This is Dr. Sammy Ramsey,
a scientist at the USDA focused on protecting bees from an emerging threat.
-The tropilaelaps mite or the tropi mite is a type of mesostigmatid mite. Many of the
mesostigmatid are parasites or predators of other organisms.
-Tropi mites are reddish brown parasites that measure roughly a millimeter in length. The
mites originated in Southeast Asia, and they started off as parasites of the Giant honey
bees, which over time developed behavioral responses to remove these pests. But the resourceful
tropi mites have now jumped to a new host— the European honey bee or Apis mellifera,
a species that you’re all probably familiar with here in the U.S., simply as our honey bees.
These honey bees thrive in many other places around the world. Luckily, the tropi
mite hasn’t reached all those populations yet. And bees in the U.S. are safe for now.
But if tropi mites do invade, honey bees are far less equipped to deal with the mite, making
them even more vulnerable. Especially since the mites attack the brood, aka bee babies.
-The tropi mite will go into the brood cell, and begin feeding on them in pretty much the
rudest way possible. They've got like this mouth, but then there's like another mouth
inside of their mouth. It's like the alien from Alien. They will bite holes in every
section of the bee's body, providing so many entry points for bacteria, for fungi, for
viruses, but also breaking down tissue as they go,
creating wounds all over the bee's body.
-This can result in bees having deformed body parts, reduced longevity, and illnesses like
Deformed wing virus.
-As you end up with more and more and more sick bees,
the colony can then collapse.
-Now, these tropi mites aren’t just bad news for honey bees. They also present a huge threat
to U.S. agriculture, meaning they're a threat to our economy and food security.
-We grow crops at levels that are unsustainable for the environment in normal settings. And
we bring in the bees to boost the yield, such that we can feed a lot more people on a much
smaller amount of land in a much more efficient way.
-As much as 75% of the crops we grow rely in part on pollination. So without honey bees’
contributions, a lot of the foods we love, like coffee, avocados, and almonds would
not be possible to grow at volume, and would therefore be a lot more expensive.
-A single colony of honey bees can have 60,000 bees in it, and millions, and millions, and
millions of those bees are moved around the United States every year to take them on a
pollination tour.
-All the crops honey bees pollinate result in more than 15 billion dollars put into our
economy every year. And it’s not just our agricultural systems that depend on bees...
-Honey bees are a staple of terrestrial ecosystems in general, because so many flowering plants
maintain important balances within the ecosystems that we know of...
-Bees and other pollinators interact with flowering plants. In turn, these plants maintain soil
health, and purify water in terrestrial ecosystems like grasses, prairies, and wetlands. And
these ecosystems are already threatened by the changing climate. On top of that, tropi
mites aren’t picky and research shows these mites can spread from species to species.
-We have found them in pretty much all of the different subgenera of honey bees that are
out there. And that is a huge concern, because its also not just the honey bees where we've found .
where we've found them. Research out of India
has shown that they can also feed on Carpenter bees.
If it were to be the case that we had this parasite transitioning to Carpenter bees,
bumble bees, we could end up in a lot of trouble.
-There are more than 20,000 bee species globally, of those, 4,000 are native to the U.S. And
if they fell victim to these mites, it could cause the collapse of beekeeping systems and
devastate many of the world’s ecosystems across all continents, except Antarctica.
That’s why we need to act fast, because the tropi mites have already started to move
out of Southeast Asia and are making their way to other parts of the world. So how exactly
can we stop these mites?
One major win is that scientists have successfully developed
a test to identify Tropilaelaps species.
But we still don't know a tried and true method to fight the mite.
-The more that we know about this organism, the more ways we can find to mitigate the
damage that it causes within honeybee colonies, the more ways that we can find to manage populations
of this parasite. I've been trying to make sure that I can increase awareness
about this organism, such that more people understand the issues that it could cause
were it to arrive in the US.
-And raising awareness is important in order to highlight the urgency of this issue. This
is the first step in getting governments and organizations to fund critical research—like
Dr. Ramsey’s—that will help mitigate the agricultural and ecological impact, should
these mites arrive in the U.S. So... when exactly will that be?
-We really don't know for sure how long it would take for these organisms to get here.
It's possible that it could be anything from a matter of years to a matter of decades,
or they potentially could never arrive at all.
-That would be the best case scenario. But that doesn't mean we shouldn’t be prepared.
And that’s why Dr. Ramsey’s work with different international institutions to help
gather important research is crucial to help ensure we get the most complete picture of
this tropi mite, while protecting our food, our economy, and our bee friends.
If you’re bee crazy, and want to learn more about different species of bees
other than the honey bee, make sure to check out the documentary, My Garden of a Thousand
Bees, streaming now on Nature on PBS. So what do you think about the tropi mite threat?
Let us know down in the comments below. Make sure to subscribe to Seeker, and thanks for
watching. I’ll see you next time.