© Alex Wild/University of Texas at Austin
A Varroa mite, a common pest that can weaken bees and make them more susceptible to pathogens, feeds on a honey bee.
A Varroa mite, a common pest that can weaken bees and make them more susceptible to pathogens, feeds on a honey bee.
An increasing number of honey bee colonies in the U.S. have seen the dwindling of their adult bees. According to a national survey, beekeepers lost nearly 40% of their honey bee colonies last winter, the highest rate reported since the survey began 13 years ago.
The engineered bacteria live in the guts of honey bees and act as biological factories, pumping out medicines protecting the bees against two major causes of colony collapse: Varroa mites and deformed wing virus. The researchers believe their method could one day scale up for agricultural use because the engineered bacteria are easy to grow, inoculating the bees is straightforward and the engineered bacteria are unlikely to spread beyond bees.
Comment: While this may be a promising avenue in addressing colony collapse disorder (and all of the assumptions about the specificity of the bacteria the team has developed hold true), there are many other factors that should be looked at, such as loss of natural habitat, stress from commercial pollination operations, and most recently, the implications of 5G technology on the orienting capacity of bees.