LINDALL BEACH, B.C. – Human food security depends on healthy bees to pollinate crops. But worldwide declines in both honey bee colonies and solitary bees are causing alarm.
The phenomenon is known as colony collapse disorder (CCD) or honey bee depopulation syndrome.
While factors such as disease, agricultural chemicals and loss of habitat are suspects in population losses, researchers have been exploring better ways to study bees in the laboratory to help solve the mystery.
Ecologists at the University of Wurzburg in Germany have devised a better way of rearing honey bee larvae in the lab that should make it easier and less stressful on the bees to study the causes of their decline.
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Their technique, together with details of how statistics adapted from other areas of ecology can aid bee research, was published in the British Ecological Society’s journal, Methods in Ecology and Evolution.
The current method of rearing lab bees has many setbacks. The key problem lies in grafting the bee larvae using fine implements. The system is time consuming and results in high mortality among the tiny larvae.
“The existing tools for collecting larvae are needles, feathers or brushes,” said lead author and researcher Harmen Hendriksma.
“These are used to scoop larvae out of their cells for transportation into a new cell, which is called grafting.”
He said his group used a plastic comb about the size of a cigar box designed for queen rearing. It has a hexagonal pattern with 110 holes the size of wax cells.
On the backside, each cell has a small plastic cup that researchers can collect after the queen has laid an egg or when a larva has hatched.
Collecting larvae this way poses no mechanical stress and results in higher larvae survival rates, he said.
Before starting his PhD in 2008, Hendriksma worked with a Dutch company producing honey for medical uses. Seeing the artificial comb used by queen breeders, he decided to try out the plastic honeycomb in the laboratory.
“Like many people I am a bit lazy and wanted to find a quicker, easier way of rearing honey bees in the laboratory. When I tried using the plastic honeycomb system, I found it was just perfect.”
Hendriksma and his colleagues found that with the new system, 97 percent of larvae survived and were raised to the pupae stage. It was also faster, allowing researchers to collect more than 1,000 larvae in 90 minutes.
“Many honey bee laboratories struggle with mortality among lab reared larvae. Additionally, good standardization of in vitro (laboratory) rearing between laboratories fails. The current study may close the gap between laboratories by providing robust starting conditions.”
He said the collection cup method allows good control of larval ages, which is essential for a standardized test procedure.
Hendriksma likens bee research to an arms race to keep up with monitoring new risks to bees.
“For instance, environmental pollution, new agricultural pesticides, pathogenic pressures, a changing landscape structure and the genetic origin of a colony may all have played a role of significance for colony losses in the recent decades,” he said.
