Saving the bee through social enterprise
The answer to the threat of colony collapse disorder in the honey bees in New Zealand and globally may lie with our Pacific neighbour, Niue.
The technique attempts to trick part of the bug’s immune system into thinking one of its genes is a virus.
The discovery by scientists at the university of aberdeen and the national bee unit has so far only been used in the lab. But now the team can take their work a step closer towards developing a product that could help beekeepers.
Project leader alan bowman says honey bee numbers are seriously declining and while there are probably several reasons for this, one of the most important factors is varroa, which sucks the blood from bees and transmits serious viral diseases.
“There is an urgent need to develop a varroa-specific, environmentally friendly treatment or some method of overcoming the varroa’s resistance mechanism to existing treatments and that’s what we are now working towards,” he says.
Researchers will create and scour databases of all the varroa genes to identify the ones that can be effectively and safely targeted by potential new treatments.
The aim is to find likely genes by the northern hemisphere autumn and start small-scale trials next year.
The researchers are asking beekeepers to send them live varroa mites to be used to test possible treatments.
“Having proved our concept in the lab we are delighted that this funding will allow us to develop our research to have real-world impact,” bowman says.
More than £250,000 (nz$485,325) of funding has been committed by the biotechnology and biological sciences research council and vita (europe) ltd.
Vita technical director max watkins says finding treatments that kill varroa mites, but don’t harm honeybees, bee products or the environment is not easy.
“The challenge is heightened because the relatively short life cycle of the varroa mite means that resistance to a single treatment can often develop quite quickly unless beekeepers alternate treatments of different types.
“Vita is therefore
supporting this exciting and innovative research and hopes that an effective and environmentally sensitive treatment can eventually be developed at a cost that is affordable to beekeepers across the globe.”
