[Pollinator] SF Chronicle: Scientists work to protect vulnerable bees

Mon Mar 10 17:30:33 PDT 2008

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/10/BA0TVDEVF.DTL

Scientists work to protect vulnerable bees

David Perlman, Chronicle <mailto:dperlman at sfchronicle.com>  Science Editor

Monday, March 10, 2008

<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2008/03/10/BA0TVDEVF.DT
L&o=0&type=printable> Kim Fondrk, a honey bee researcher now working with UC
Da...
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2008/03/10/BA0TVDEVF.DT
L&o=1&type=printable> A marked queen bee from Arizona is surrounded by her
work...
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2008/03/10/BA0TVDEVF.DT
L&o=2&type=printable> Wood smoke is pumped on beehives in a Dixon almond
orchar...
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2008/03/10/BA0TVDEVF.DT
L&o=3&type=printable> A special breed of honey bee from Arizona gathers
pollen ...

(03-10) 04:00 PDT Davis- -- 

It's almond blossom time in California.

The orchards are bursting into bloom and the almond trees, their canopies
ablaze in white and pink, are all abuzz with millions upon millions of honey
bees avidly gathering pollen and nectar for their hives.

Here at UC's honey bee research center, scientists are seeking to breed new
strains of the immensely valuable insects called Apis mellifera carnica,
while others are probing the recently sequenced bee genome to understand the
most important qualities conferred upon each tribe by its unique genetic
heritage.

The researchers are bent on improving the ability of the bees to pollinate
the flowering fruit trees and vegetables that account for more than $35
billion a year in crop value for California, and right now they hope to
understand and perhaps halt the spread of the disease called Colony Collapse
Disorder that has devastated the hives of many professional beekeepers in
California and across the country.

Kim Fondrk, stubble-bearded and clothed in his white "bee suit" with its
screened veil like a fencer's mask, is a veteran apiculturist who has
emplaced 54 wooden box-shaped hives housing more than a million lively honey
bees on the edge of an almond orchard in nearby Dixon.

The sight of a million bees flitting, flying and buzzing around as they head
off to nearby trees and then swarm back to their hives loaded with pollen
and nectar is more than a little disconcerting to the casual observer.

But Fondrk isn't bothered. With a tin can of burning wood fiber, he pumps a
small bellows to smoke a hive lightly - it calms the bees a bit, he says.
Then with bare hands he opens a hive box and pulls out a wood-rimmed frame
that holds hundreds of regularly spaced cells like a real honeycomb. The
frame is covered with bees - by the hundreds, perhaps thousands.

The bees are busy indeed, their legs depositing pollen or nectar into each
tiny cell, their heads ramming the stuff into the cells, and their bodies
clustering so closely that they form a single mass of tightly packed wings
and dark gray bodies, all moving in concert around the visibly larger queen,
whom Fondrk has identified with a white painted dot on her body.

Genetics of hoarding

The females in the colony do all the work - gathering pollen and nectar,
feeding and cosseting the queen, nurturing the larvae and keeping the hive
orderly. The lowly males have only one job: To inseminate the queen and keep
her pregnant so she can lay 1,000 eggs a day. Inseminate - then die, that's
the pitiful life of all the males. 

"But we're trying to get at the genetics of pollen hoarding behavior,"
Fondrk says. "It's very basic research."

The bees collect pollen on their legs from the blossoms, and while some of
it gets dispersed to pollinate other trees, a lot stays on their legs to be
stored in the hive and provide protein for the colony. Some bees hoard a lot
of pollen, some don't.

"When the weather's fine there's plenty of pollen for everyone, but when the
pickings get slim in winter, the bees need their hoarded protein," Fondrk
explains. "So pollen hoarding is an important ingrained ability for bees,
and we want to understand the genetic basis of that hoarding behavior."

Fondrk's collection of honey bee colonies was established at the Harry
Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis 18 years ago by Robert
E. Page Jr., a professor of entomology, who moved all his bees to Arizona
State University in Tempe four years ago when he became founding director of
the School of Life Sciences there.

But Arizona was no fit place for Page's honey bees to thrive because the
climate was too hot, he said, so Fondrk brought them back to Davis, where
the climate is benign and the bees can busily pollinate all kinds of other
crops once the almond trees have stopped blooming. Almonds are a major
California crop that brings in an estimated $2 billion a year, and it
depends on pollination by healthy honey bees.

Breeding stronger bees

Page keeps in touch, and Fondrk periodically ships him queen bees from their
carefully bred strain of pollen hoarders. In a phone conversation, Page said
bees that don't hoard pollen "live hand to mouth" and the larvae in their
hives suffer serious protein deficiency in winter when food is scarce. 

But after 34 generations of selective breeding, Page said, it's clear that
the pollen hoarding strain of the bees appear better able to withstand the
onslaught of Colony Collapse Disorder, and he and Fondrk are now regularly
shipping queens from the strain to beekeepers around the country.

At the Laidlaw facility, Susan Cobey, a bee geneticist, tends a cluster of
hives filled with a bee subspecies named Apis mellifera carnica. A queen,
whose only job is laying eggs, normally mates only once in her life - in
midair with up to 17 males known as drones, who inseminate once and die.

Cobey propagates her bee strain using a technique called instrumental
insemination that involves using tiny tubes to remove semen from the crushed
bodies of several drones at a time and then inserting the semen by syringe
into a queen already anesthetized by carbon dioxide.

"I'm breeding my bees to be good, hardy and productive," Cobey says. "I want
them to be temperamentally gentle, to resist pathogens like mites, and to be
able to winter over in good health. A strong, healthy bee is my goal - it's
what beekeepers need."

Cobey's bees haven't been hit by the dreaded collapse disorder, and neither
she nor any other scientist knows what causes the disease, which can
sometimes wipe out entire colonies.

'Simply overwhelmed'

Eric Mussen, the nationally known extension apiculturalist in the UC Davis
entomology department, says "bees all over the country are simply being
overwhelmed by the disorder, and until we know better, we can't finger any
one cause."

Stresses that may weaken bees when their hives are shipped long distances
for their jobs as pollinators may well be involved, Mussen says. Attacks by
mites, viruses of many kinds and pesticide spraying all pose other stresses,
and malnutrition suffered by bees where workers fail to hoard enough pollen
may be the most important factor, he says.

Right now, with the almond orchards in full bloom and the pollinating bees
hard at work, the Davis scientists keep trying to breed them for better
health and understand the role their genes play in both disease resistance
and productivity. 

E-mail David Perlman at dperlman at sfchronicle.com. 

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/10/BA0TVDEVF.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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