Cannibalizing honey bees target deadly mite that kills colonies
August 3, 2016
From: Delta Farm Press
Honey bees with the VSH gene are able to detect bee pupae within the brood nest that have mite families. They cannibalize those pupae and eat the mite offspring as well. If every time the female mite tries to reproduce the VSH bees interrupt the cycle, the mite population declines.
Colony collapse disorder has wiped out hundreds of thousands of honey bee colonies in the U.S. and worldwide. Bee breeders at the USDA Honey Bee Laboratory at Baton Rouge, La., have developed a line of bees with resistance to the varroa mite, which vectors viruses that lead to colony collapse.
First, you have to wrap your head around the fact that there are some among us who are at one with honey bees.
They know bees from creation to death, their royalty/worker/collective-based hierarchy. They know bee sex (how randy drones congregate in a bee singles bar waiting for a virgin queen to come flying along for some explosive — literally — group lovemaking, after which the drones fall to the ground and die), and if you can imagine such a thing, how to collect bee semen for genetic research (one honey bee drone produces about one-millionth of a liter of semen, and again, he dies).
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