Twenty Russian honeybee queens enjoying a respite on Grande Terre Island in Louisiana may soon be busy helping breed new generations of commercial bees that resist parasitic varroa mites.
Agricultural Research Service geneticist Thomas Rinderer and colleagues have been studying the Russian queens since July at a quarantine apiary on Grande Terre.
If the Russian honeybees get a clean bill of health – meaning they harbor no foreign or domestic diseases – Rinderer’s group will transfer them to apiaries at the research service’s honeybee breeding, genetics and physiology research laboratory in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Read Also
Alberta crop diversification centres receive funding
$5.2 million of provincial funding pumped into crop diversity research centres
After evaluating the Russian queens again in the spring, Rinderer’s group will introduce 300 mites into each 40,000- to 60,000-bee hive.
The 1Ú16th-inch-long mite sucks blood from adult bees and their brood.
Severe infestations can destroy a susceptible hive unless checked with chemical miticides.
But the chemicals aren’t seen as the best solution. Problems include handling concerns, chemical costs, and the potential for mites to develop resistance. These concerns have prompted scientists to search for bees that hold their own against the parasites.
In tests by Victor Kuznetsov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian queens’ original colonies showed excellent varroa mite resistance.
The Russian and American bees are the same species, Apis mellifera. But the Russian bees, from eastern Russia’s Primorsky region, have evolved to possess natural resistance traits due to heavy mite selection pressures there.
This summer marks the third time Russian bees have been imported by ARS in an effort aimed at broadening the genetic diversity of prior introductions of these bees into domestic hives.
The Baton Rouge trials will help show to what degree the Russian queens’ American progeny withstand mite infestations through inherited resistance traits, such as grooming behaviors or physiological defences.
In 2002, the scientists will supply about 40 of the queens’ daughter bees to co-operating apiaries in Iowa, Mississippi and Louisiana for further evaluations.
Bees pollinate billions of dollars worth of food, fibre and feed crops.
