welcome to inside the hive .TV the show that takes you into the world of bees way way way
you said I can do this one and I have a special guest today intro okay everyone
dr. bugs here your friendly neighbour entomologist and I am hijacking from the
insidethehive TV I am the special well now actually very special special guest okay
so just a great opportunity a guy here to talk to my old friend
that's just published a fantastic article in the PNAS and it is getting a lot of
attention a very important work I think the whole world can see there now
and I think I will let you talk because everybody know what the paper is
about. Fat bodies are the main source of nutrient of varroa destructor but what
people might not get it too much is what's next? what is next?
that's a great question yes so we have yeah so what is next that is a great
question and there's been a lot of talk about fat bodies and varroa and
sometimes we can have too much of a singular focus on one on the present and
not keep in mind that the future is right around the corner. There's this
parasite that I've been thinking about I went to Thailand last year and saw this
crazy parasite that was just destroying colonies it's called the Tropilaelaps
mites and I'm thinking just a second if you don't know what tropilaelaps is I did a
video a long time ago. if you don't know what tropilaelaps is please click the
link right here so you will know what's the problem. If you think Varroa is a problem
that's the devil you crazy mites and the reason why I
feel like we really need to focus on them right now is because the same
issues that led to us thinking that these things the varroa mites were
feeding on the bee's blood they're the same things that are happening right now
that could leave us with some pretty sizable of misconceptions about the
tropilaelaps mite all right so what's next? let me get a
better frame here with your the PNAS you
here we go look at that cover yeah it is the Cover. so you know how hard that
is? you know how many scientists can get this opportunity in life? well so I do
have to say that the United States Department of Agriculture has a lab
called the electron confocal microscopy unit and they really breathed life into
a lot of this work because I can talk until I'm blue in the face about tiny
little mites but it's difficult for people to see them they were able to
take a lot of the samples that I was giving to them and put them in the
electron microscope and produce stuff that I mean now everyone can see what
I've been talking about that the varroa mite under the the plates of the bee how
it's getting through this membrane to all this fat body tissue that I think is
something that really helped people conceptualize something that I've been
talking about for a couple of years. All right so what's next?
Sam what are you doing how are you going to save the world of bees?
pressure that's a lot of pressure I don't know that we're gonna save the
world of bees the wonderful thing about science is that is a collaborative
effort so there's not too much pressure on any one researcher what I'm hoping to
do now is to to take my interest and my passion for research on honey bees and
honey bee associates and to use that to create something that other researchers
can build off of there's another parasite that is poised to do something
very similar there's the tropilaelaps mites in
Southeast Asia and it's kind of concerning that it's decided
that it doesn't just want to hang out in Southeast Asia it wants to see the world
and so it's been spreading throughout different countries and about the same
pattern that varroa destructor started spreading before we saw it here in the
u.s.. Why is all of that important? well when Varroa first got here there was
very very very little research actually written about these creatures in English
and as a result we had to spend a good deal of our time kind of basing our
projects and our research and our understanding of this creature on work
that we really couldn't read and on experiments that for that reason we
couldn't reproduce and so we thought that these creatures were feeding on the
bees blood because of a study written in the former Soviet Union some of the the
details of the ways that the experiments were conducted left us with the
conclusion that wasn't actually accurate the same thing could happen with tropilaelaps
because now a lot of these studies are being written up in Chinese
and as a result we may not be able to easily verify and that these studies are
proving the things that we think they are proving . So how people can help you to
reach those goals my friend? How people can help you to go to Thailand? and you
know find those answers. That is such a leading question Humberto or know
that I already have a GoFundMe page for which I'm raising funds to go to
Thailand it's crazy that you would ask something like that I know such a coincidence
remarkable coincidence and by the way I'm gonna leave a link in the
description below so you can easily access and if you're generous enough you
can help this young scientist to find more good stuff. How about that? this
guy's perfect I love him see this is why we watch this channel right yep so
either behind the scenes behind the scenes and inside the hive
so as he has already alluded to I've been raising money for a project to go
to Thailand and other places in Southeast Asia and to work with Tropilaelaps
mites on their native hosts on the European honey bees that are currently
there and to look at the different aspects of this organisms biology there
have been really really really concerning there's been very concerning
information that's come out recently about the fact that tropilaelaps mites
have been found on other species of bees in Thailand so they found them on a
number of different honey bee species but they even found them on carpenter
bees in Thailand and our worry is that if they arrived in the u.s. they'd be as
destructive actually much more destructive than varroa destructor
but varroa only impacts honeybees these guys could actually go after our native
bees like our carpenter bees in our bumble bees and wouldn't that be a mess
so I'm raising money to learn as much as I can about these creatures before
they're they're introduced if they are ever introduced I want to know what
they're feeding on I want to know what chemicals can control them I want to
know if we can rear them in the lab so that we can better observe their
behaviors and test different chemical constructs on their biology and I'm
gonna try my best to get as many of these questions as possible answered in
just nine months it helps that I already know a little bit of time poop food plus
iodine is Naiya so Wow Wow
hi everyone I feel I need to stop here to split this video in two parts the
next video next week Sammy and I will discuss future projects how to kill
varroa with this new information and much more also I need to say a couple
words regarding Sammy's of journey I follow Sammy from the very beginning
I remember us discussing possibilities Plan B's and C's when I was at
University of Maryland when I when he was starting this project a long
a long time ago. For a long time I wasn't convinced about the idea he was trying
to sell we could see the potential there but the data he presented to me for many
many times wasn't enough to convince me or others in the field that in real fat
bodies were the main source of food resources for varroa destructor Sammy did
a fantastic job not giving up and was able to build a solid amount of data
that make it difficult now to see otherwise now why am I saying this I'm
saying this because this is a great example of how science works we always
need to go where the evidence lead us it's not a matter of believing it's it's
not a problem to change opinion based on new information when new information
come in there is no problem to change your opinion I saw some people coming to
me and saying Umberto you flipped with the weird connotation behind it and I
have say duh of course he did the last time I talked to Sammy and he showed me the
electron microscopy work combined with other results there to show to me
that was a revelation I was so happy for many reasons first science move forward
and show me something new that clearly will help us to find solutions against
the biggest enemy of honeybees today the varroa mite. Second the hard work of Sammy
paid off and he achieved something very nice for his career Congratulations to
everybody involved in this project I hope to see more good stuff soon. If you
like this video hit the like button below subscribe to the channel if you
didn't already and I'll see you guys in the next video thanks for watching
inside the Hadar TV the show about bees Cheers