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What would happen if we stopped helping honeybees? Would they disappear from the face of the Earth?
What would happen to beekeepers around the globe?. There is a rising Trend among beekeepers to let
natural selection take its course in selecting honeybees that are resistant to varroa mites,
the biggest enemy of honeybees. Some people see this approach as problematic because a significant
amount of bees would die in a process and this would result in many beekeepers losing their
operations with huge consequences for our food supply chain. Furthermore the process is not fast
and could take decades to see the results. Can science help to speed up this process?
When I talk to beekeepers throughout North America especially the ones with more experience it is
clear to identify a sentiment of nostalgia for the past. They miss the good old times
as they like to say, when they didn't need to be concerned about the honeybees Health
all the time and could ultimately enjoy a better life. Many beekeepers are considering
quitting their jobs and I understand why, it is no longer easy to keep bees.
Currently in order to ensure the survival of honeybees for pollination of our crops,
beekeepers must invest a significant amount of time and money and despite all these effort there
are no guarantees of success. In my opinion the modern beekeeping industry is facing a crisis.
It is conflicted with two different beekeeping philosophies. In this video I will explain this
issue and I would love to know your thoughts on that if it's possible. Since the introduction of
the main beekeeping problems of the century such as American foulbrood, tracheal mites,
and the biggest enemy of honeybees of all times the Varroa mites, Modern beekeeping industry has
focused on finding solutions to fight these pests a modern approach to beekeeping problems is to
utilize all available resources to develop new solutions for each specific issue, and this can
take a form of new products and services and protocols, especially since the introduction
of varroa mites around 40 years ago a significant efforts have been made to combat this pest. These
effort have grown exponentially after emergency of the colony collapse disorder in 2006 and boy
we have a lot of things to help the honeybees today. At the first glance the situation might
seem promising however all the resources we've invested so far have not only failed to solve
the problem of controlling the varroa mite but have also in my opinion snared the entire modern
beekeeping industry. The problem is that these new procedures and products have led to a greater
dependence of chemicals for bees to survive like mother honeybees as I like to call them are highly
Reliant and on beekeepers for their survival the more beekeepers fight to keep these bees
alive the more they become trapped in a cycle of dependence. On the other hand some places on
a planet initially suffered from the introduction of these pests, and because of the limit resources
they had no choice but to let the bees die and start fresh with the surviving bees. However these
places are now perhaps beginning to react the benefits of what was once considered a misfortune.
Take a moment to think about that, there is already bees in other parts of the world that
produce quality honey with minimal interference and as a result at a much lower cost. It's only
a matter of time before these competitors to grow, get stronger and get more powerful in
a capitalist system. You can try to protect your own Market with sanctions and other measures But
ultimately it is inevitable that a cheaper high quality product will prevail no matter what.
Efforts to speed up the selection process of resistant honeybees already exists and we know
that honeybees with greater hygienic Behavior can handle pests and diseases better including
varroa mites. So I hit the road to see for myself in the field with real beekeepers the performance
of Dr Kaira Wagoner's research UBO, short for unhealthy brood odor, is a new assay delevolped
in her lab at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro to help beekeepers select honeybees
genetic stocks with higher hygienic behavior in the hope that these bees will perform better with
less use of Labor and pesticides. Essentially Dr Wagoner isolate in a laboratory the orders of sick
honeybee brood to identify honeybees triggered by those compounds to perform hygienic Behavior.
Making this a fantastic tool for beekeepers to select bees with this highly desired genetic
trait. I made a full video about this in the past if you want to delve into the details Link in the
description of this video. A group of beekeepers is currently testing this new product in the field
and I had the chance to follow one of them in the state of Vermont the entire team was prepared and
excited to test the hygienic Behavior capability of several honeybee colonies during the test some
team members opened the hives to find good frame of brood while others sprayed the UBO compounds on
the surface of the selected testing area the device used it for spraying would likely be
included with the product in the future once the spring is done the frame is returned to
the Colony and after two hours the amount of uncapped brood is quantified. If the bees did
not inspect the sprayed brood area it indicates low hygienic behavior, on the other hand, if they
open up some of the brood cells to inspect. It shows more hygienic behavior compared with the
previous scenario. However the true excitement comes when a result like this occurs. Clearly
demonstrating that these bees have strong hygienic behavior and therefore are more capable to deal
with diseases by themselves and can be used for queen breathing. So a few years ago we started to
leverage The Diagnostic lab at the uvmb lab to start helping bee breeders to help them better
select hardier more Pest and pathogen resistant stock that's local to our environment here in
Vermont so we started off working with Mike Palmer of french hill Apiaries and providing
field and lab support doing monthly varroa nozeem accounts we did some virus assays for him also
and we started doing freeze kill brood assays as well to help identify some hygienic behavior and
then last year we started collaborating with Kara Wagoner of University of North Carolina Greensboro
because she started to develop this UBO assay the unhealthy brewed odor assay that does a better
job of identifying hygienic stock for beekeepers it expanded to now not just helping Mike Palmer
French Hills Apiaries, Andrew Munkres as well at Lemon Fair honey works and also Jack Rath here
at Hundread Acre Wood Aviary and it's expanding to other bee breeders as well so it's been
a really awesome way to get these bee breeders kind of working together the B lab helping to
support their efforts in in selecting for more hygienic disease and pest resistant resistant bees
Jack, Why do you think this is going to be important for beekeepers? Well
I firmly believe that Varroa is the biggest challenge that we're facing and I think that
just trying to find the next chemical that's going to manage it is not going to work in the long run
and I think that we have to do all that we can to help bees fight on their own and this UBO assay
is identifying perhaps a different trait than the freeze killed brood assay I had done some of that
um two years ago and used it selecting my breeders it was quite interesting seeing how the stock from
the best of the freeze kill did on the ubosa and there's certainly some correlation the high freeze
killed responsive lines do better with the ubo I do play around a little bit with instrumental
insemination and the idea of being able to combine these traits and combine these lines with this
demo insemination is is pretty exciting and to see whether we can kind of concentrate the trait
in in some lines so later on in the season we're going to be doing some grooming essays we're going
to be using screen bottom boards and looking at Mite drops and examining those mites for
any injuries that the bees might have caused an indicator of grooming
behavior on bees and later we're going to see if we can cross bees that are high performing
groomers with high UBO performing bees and we're going to be using our instrumental insemination
for that as well and then this year we're also looking at the heritability of the ubo trait in
both open mated systems and instrumentally inseminated systems so we're going to be
following Daughters of high ubo that are either instrumentally inseminated or open-mated and
seeing how those perform and how much of the ubo trait gets lost after a generation and it's pretty
exciting to have more than one trait that we're looking for because I think that if you're using
one test you're limiting the B's ability you're only selecting for those that do one thing which I
think unnecessarily shrinks your genetic basis you know these have lots of different strengths and
I don't want to tell them how to control mites I just want them to do it yeah and using as
many different methods as as possible I kept these before varroa and it was really different yeah you
put Donnie supers on in the spring you took them off in the fall that's it and you kept expanding
because you couldn't help it and it's it's definitely different now and I feel especially
for the beginners that you know start doing this because they're excited they want to help the
bees they want to help the environment and they didn't need to know that they needed to become
pest monitors and I don't think that'll go away but I think we can improve it that's
the hope. This conflict between two different beekeeping philosophies is very interesting
and I will follow this along closely. To be honest I'm not sure what's the best course of action here
should we continue to fight and intervene as much as possible to keep the system
running or should we step back and let the bees figure things out by themselves
or, there is a middle ground where science can assist the bees in helping themselves what do you think?
It is a complicated subject but it's encouraging to see scientists getting involved in bringing
potential solutions to the table I'm very excited to see what the future holds so what what have we
done? [Music] Please, leave a comment section below and if you have some extra time watch this video right
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