The varroa mite resistant honey bee developed by U.S. Department of Agricultures (USDA)'s Agricultural Research Service could save beekeepers time and money, a researcher said in a news release earlier this month.
A study published in Nature's Scientific Reports on Thursday, April 7, reported that the varroa mite resistant Pol-line honey bees, developed by USDA's Agricultural Research Service are more than twice as likely to survive winter than standard honey bees.
Michael Simone-Finstrom in a video about honey bee health and pesticide exposure posted last year
| youtube.com/watch?v=LZc3ouD-pak
"These survival results continue to highlight the importance of beekeepers needing to manage varroa infestations," research molecular biologist Michael Simone-Finstrom said in USDA's news release issued the same day. "The ability to have high colony survival with reduced or no varroa treatments can allow beekeepers to save money and time."
Simone-Finstrom co-leads the study with research entomologist Frank Rinkevich at the the Agricultural Research Service Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics, and Physiology Research Laboratory in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Their study was published the same day in the National Center for Biotechnology Information's National Library of Medicine.
The study's abstract describes the varroa mite, the ectoparasite varroa destructor, as "the greatest threat to managed honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies globally."
"Despite significant efforts, novel treatments to control the mite and its vectored pathogens have shown limited efficacy, as the host remains naïve," according to the abstract. "A prospective solution lies in the development of varroa-resistant honey bee stocks, but a paucity of rigorous selection data restricts widespread adoption."
Agricultural Research Service developed Pol-line bees in 2014, and the study was the first time that the bees were tested "head-to-head" with standard honey bee stock in commercial apiaries, according to the news release. Both stocks of bees provided pollination services and produced honey in four states: Mississippi, California, and North and South Dakota. The two sets of bees also were watched to see how well they survived winter without varroa mite treatment.
The study's standard bees faired poorly. Pol-line colonies that received varroa mite in the fall had a 62.5% survival rate, compared to standard bees' 3% survival rate.
Varroa mites have become the single largest problem U.S. beekeepers face since the mites arrived from Southeast Asia in 1987. Miticides exist but hives have developed resistance to them, which makes development of bees resistant to the mite even more important.
"We would like to replace reliance on chemical controls with honey bees like Pol-line that have high mite resistance of their own and perform well, including high honey production, in commercial beekeeping operations," Rinkevich said. "Pol-line's high mite resistance is based on their behavior for removing varroa by expelling infested pupae - where varroa mites reproduce - a trait called varroa-sensitive hygiene."
Rinkevich and Simone-Finstrom's team are working on advanced, easy-to-breed selection tools that would allow beekeepers to select resistance traits in their own hives.
"The great thing about this particular trait is that we've learned honey bees of all types express it at some level, so we know with the right tools, it can be promoted and selected in everyone's bees," Simone-Finstrom said.
