British honeybees are in critical decline. Britain is expected to run out of domestically-produced honey before Christmas.
Last year, the Varroa mite, thought to be a major contributor to honey bee colony collapse disorder, killed two billion honey bees.
Sussex University professor, Francis Ratnieks, who is Britain’s only apiarist, believes the solution is selectively breeding queen bees that will produce higher proportions of “hygienic” bees.
Normally, about 10% of a hive’s worker bees have the hygienic gene. This gene gives bees a strong tendency to keep their hive clean, by removing dead and dying pupae and larvae and controlling pathogens including the Varroa mite.
Selective breeding of hygienic queens will hopefully increase the proportion of hygienic workers.
1 response so far ↓
gerg // November 22, 2008 at 11:40 pm
I love that the lowly, unnoticed bee may be the keystone species that brings civilization and its filthy habits to collapse. It’s the object lesson of our own psyches, as writ large in that quintessential human document, the horror movie: the killer always lurks in some mundane place where you’d never think to look.
Cue the screams.