Hi there, this is Humberto here this is inside the hide.TV the show that takes
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don't miss a single video. This is the video number 2 of the video series above
the PNAS paper of doctor Sammy Ramsey, we got together to celebrate his
achievement and we made two videos about it, talking about the what's next in his
career and possible new ways to control Varroa based on the the results he
present in his article. So i if you don't know we're talking about i'll leave a
link here in the corner so you can go back and watch the video number one. and
without further do let's go straight to the video.
I also read that tropilaelaps was found in rats. That's weird. You know I'm
saying, this is the kind of mite that's not specific he can feed apparently in
every every living thing that arrives cose by. First time I was in
Thailand I was terrified, when I open a hive and I saw that creature
that's why I did my video so fast. I was so concerned that I just want
everybody to know as fast as possible. Do you think that Tropilaelaps also take
advantage of fat body
there was a lot all at once. I'm gonna address the first part first then we're
gonna get to the fat body part. all right Tropilaelaps is an organism that is
a generalist so it seems to be that it recently evolved from a generalist
predator that was able to transition to being a parasite and for that reason it
still seems to have the biochemical machinery necessary to translate a lot
of different things into food varroa destructor doesn't seem to do very well
if fed anything other than fat body it also doesn't seem to do very well
away from honeybees they have to be with honeybees it's the only circumstance
where we've ever found them reproducing they will not live long apart from them
however Tropilaelaps mites seem to be able to survive in colonies of other
forms of honeybees not just apis mellifera the european be they seem to
be able to survive feeding on creatures like carpenter bees which are very
different biologically from from the honeybees and in addition to that the
very first time they were described they were described as parasites collected
from rats and for almost a decade we thought that they were another rat
parasite until we found out that they were actually more closely associated
with the honeybee colonies that the rats were trying to lodge themselves in for
warmth then they were to the to the rats
themselves so um yeah it's a little bit concerning when you really think about a
generalist predator or a generalist parasite like that being allowed into
the US and all the different hosts that it could potentially utilize and damage
but you asked yeah yeah but you asked about fat better then the fat buddy
question is a big one for me because if it Tropilaelaps they produce gigantic
eggs I mean when I say their eggs are big their eggs are big it looks like
it's more than 40% of the mites body volume is just egg and it's one single
egg that they are able to produce that is just huge and it's pretty much
everyday that they can produce an egg of this size now when you're producing when
you're reproducing at a rate like that when you're producing an organism that
large every day you need a substantial source of nutrition now in order to be
able to do that and the bees' blood is not going to be a good source for that
there's just not much in the way of nutrition however that fatty tissue is
just chock full of all the nutrients you need to make some pretty big babies so
I'm thinking if given just those two options for what the mites could be
eating I'm thinking it's not the hemolymph it's not the bees blood probably the fat
bodies but that is just speculation at this point I have had no opportunity to
actually test that by feeding these mites are doing any of the sorts of
experiments that we're done in this study is this still in the frame yes
it is,I mean I'm not gonna get tired of looking at this one knows everything
enjoy enjoyed this achievement my friend thank you um how do you kill
those bastards yeah how are we gonna kill these bastards
well um I don't think that it's a good idea to attempt to use contact
insecticides that are my decides on these mites that they need to be exposed
to for long periods of time because they don't spend very long
on adult bees and that's usually the time where we expose these parasites to
to pesticides to try to reduce their populations so we know with burrow ax
there's the period of time that they're inside the cell and there's a period of
time that they're on the adult bees and it's this period of time on the adult
bees that we target and then we exposed them to pesticides to try to kill them
and we got a good window of time to do that it's about between 3 and 13 days
that they're on adult bees with an average of about 7 days so we get a
week's worth of time to expose them to pesticides Tropilaelaps it's only
hours there on the adult bee population between 12 and 24 hours that doesn't
give you a lot of time to make sure that they are adequately exposed to these
insecticides and what's worse we know that Tropilaelaps have a lot of genes
necessary for them to develop pesticide resistance and we want to make sure that
they don't just immediately become well not immediately but they don't quickly
become immune to pesticides well the way to make sure that a creature is going to
quickly develop an immunity is to expose them to a pesticide in sub-lethal in low
levels constantly and I think that's what we would end up doing if we tried
to target the population of the mites that are on the adult piece what we need
to target is the population under the capped. My job has a field guy researcher
my job is to kill Varroa that's my mission right now is the worst
enemy of honeybees right now I'm always looking for opportunities like that and
I want to discuss an idea that came together with the your discovery with
the fat bodies and also another discovery that was announced a
couple of months ago do you I don't know if you heard about the vaccine yes you
heard the Vitellogenin vaccine yes you guys don't know what we're talking about
here I also made a video of that isn't it is it here in the corner
I got an idea I want to discuss with you I want to know your
opinion above that How that we know that Varroa feed on fat bodies and that vaccine
and if you look at the papers in the patent you can see the honeybees have a
capacity to allocate things yeah between generations on the fat body so do you
think we are gonna be able to one day to use this knowledge to attach something
that can cure to the and feed the bees the bee is going to deliver that to the
fat body and then we kill those bastards I'm working on something I cannot share
it right now oh yes I am to sr. we need to talk well you're now seeing the
finger pyramid of sinister contemplation I know these mites should be shaking in
their ambulant there's a little footpads yeah they should be really worried right
now because we've got a lot of options open to us that were not open to us
before there are researchers who have tried to put some sort of chemo
therapeutic some sort of insecticide inside of the bees blood so that when
the mites fed on the bees it would kill the mites and never really worked out
they never really got an effective amount of kill from this and the reason
likely being that they were putting it in the wrong place
now we could target the fat body tissue itself but we really wouldn't want to
put a pesticide in there because then it could bio magnify the the blood of the
bees is something that's recycled on a regular basis but the fat body the fat
body that you emerge with as an adult is the fat body you're gonna have for the
rest of your life it can easily stock up large amounts of things that we don't
intend them to be in there so I am I'm cautiously optimistic though when we
look at options like the the vaccine that was discussed earlier where there's
a way to use to use a set of proteins they're naturally occurring already in
the bees as a carrier for something that we want to get into the mites body now
the site of the telogen and production and storage is the fat body if we could
potentially get something attached to the patella Jenyns that the mites don't
like something that kills the mites or sterilizing the mites well yeah now
you're seeing yeah you open a lot of doors you open a lot of doors whoo thank
you sir it's been a collaborative effort I got
to work with a spectacular team of researchers and I cannot thank them
enough for all of the help that they provided people the idea that we were
working with was one that seemed crazy at the beginning and so I wasn't
expecting people to get on board with it the way that they did but it just from
one researcher to the next people connected with the idea they got on
board they contributed their resources and their talents and we ended up with
what I think is a really exciting product in this that I think a lot of
researchers will be able to build on going forward I'm very happy for you my
friend I'm very happy for you very excited about this publication and I'm
doing this video also to help you to spread the word and other good stuff
here how we gonna finish this no I'm gonna get closer alright so I got this
opportunity and I couldn't, opportunists like that we need to
make it happen right now especially now I'm far away yeah he's in Florida now
guys this guy here in Maryland still so I hope you guys enjoyed this video
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thank you see you guys later peace out bye