Signs of Fall 7: More on Bees!

Honeybee. Photo by C.J.Sharp, Wikimedia Commons

(Click here to listen to an audio version of this blog!)

In the April 1, 2019 issue of Penn State News a new, on-line tool developed by Penn State researchers was unveiled. This tool, called “Beescape,” will enable beekeepers to more accurately assess the quality of the environment around their beehives. Honeybees can forage for pollen and nectar from flowers that are several kilometers away from their hive of residence, and beekeepers often have very little data about the abundance and nature of the nectar and pollen producing plants or about potential stresses from agricultural chemicals or other forms of pollution within this large foraging area. Beescape compiles data from habitats around a hive’s location and analyzes both the benefits and dangers of a particular site. Hive  locations may then be adjusted to maximize the positive aspects of the surrounding landscape and minimize the potentially negative ones.

In another high-tech application to the age-old art of beekeeping, artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques were utilized to try to mitigate the deleterious effects of Varola mites on honeybees.   Varola mites are an exotic, invasive species that can destroy both domesticated (hive grown) and feral colonies of honeybees. The stress of Varola mite infestations can weaken honeybee immune systems and reduce their overall physiological fitness making them vulnerable to viral infections and poisoning by pesticides and herbicides. Varola mites are thought to be a key factor in the complex matrix of “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD).

Honeybee with attached Varola mite. Photo by USDA

Classical methods by which the extent of a Varola mite infestation in a honeybee hive have been measured are quite invasive. For example, the USDA Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland uses the following mite assessment technique: 300 bees from a hive are put into a large, glass jar. The bees are sprinkled with powdered sugar, and then the entire jar is vigorously shaken. Mites, previously attached to the bees, are dislodged and fall to the bottom of the jar where they are counted (the end-status of the sugar-coated, violently tumbled bees was not indicated).

The new Varola mite assessment method was developed by high school student Jade Greenberg and some engineers at the New Jersey based artificial intelligence company, KInetica. Using tiny cameras to repeatedly photograph the bees residing in a healthy hive and bees living in a Varola-infested hive, Greenberg utilized machine learning techniques to develop a photo-algorithm that generated a real time index describing the level of Varola infection in the hive. Greenberg’s work won the engineering category of the Nokia Bell Labs North Jersey Regional Science Fair and took her to the finals at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Greenberg’s ultimate plan is to use this monitoring technique to design a new type of bee hive that will be resistant to the invasion and proliferation of the Varola mites!

Virtual reality (VR) is also being utilize to better understand memory and learning processes in honeybees! Researchers at the Free University of Berlin trained honeybees to walk along color-coded mazes in order to locate sucrose-rich rewards. They then put these trained bees into a VR apparatus that replicated the original matrix and allowed them the “walk” the VR color-coded matrix (on a rotating, Styrofoam “treadmill”) in search of their sucrose. Electrodes attached to the bees’ brains recorded the neurological changes that occurred in the brain section previously identified as functioning as the bee’s memory/learning center. Real world trained bees had little difficulty accomplishing the VR matrix indicating that learning and memory retention was, indeed, occurring. When the experiment was turned around, however, and a cohort of bees was trained in the VR system and then transferred to a real world matrix, the VR trained bees did not negotiate the real world matrix nearly as rapidly or as efficiently as real world trained bees. The results suggested that learning and memory retention was not being accomplished in the VR system!

And, finally, two non-techie reports about bees!

Photo by R. Moehring, USFWS, Flickr

An article in the New York Times (August 11, 2019) described the popularity of beekeeping in Berlin and several other large cities in Germany. Within its city limits Berlin has a density of 20 registered hives per square mile. This hive density is 3 to 7 times that which is found in the German countryside (a place where bees would easily find nectar and pollen sources and also where they could accomplish the vital pollination of a myriad of food crops!). Authorities are concerned that the people who are managing these city-kept bees are not well trained or competent. They report that the bees, when residing in an poorly tended hive, tend to swarm and find their own colony locations often in inconvenient places throughout the city (lamp posts, street-side trees, eaves of houses and buildings, etc.). The number of “wild” swarms and the necessity of their collection is becoming a serious problem in Berlin!

I mentioned before (Signs of Fall 8 (October 25, 2018)) that NPR had reported that beekeeping was becoming an increasingly cool thing for millennials to do in Philadelphia! Let’s hope that the beginning bee keepers learn something about their hobby before they put a hive out on their apartment balcony!

Photo by TriviaKing, Wikimedia Commons

Researchers at Cornell University in an article in Science (January 18, 2019) reported that apple orchards located near natural habitats or near high-quality urban landscapes had a richer, more diverse community of bees than orchards bordered by agricultural fields.  Ten years of observations on 27 golden delicious and McIntosh apple orchards in upstate New York were combined in this study. Eighty-eight bee species were identified. Agricultural fields due to their lack of nectar and pollen producing native plants and the occurrence of regular spraying with herbicides and pesticides were particularly depauperate in wild bee species. A major, practical consequence of the increased richness of the bee community in the native and urban area adjacent orchards was a very vigorous pollination of the apple trees that resulted in a significantly more abundant yield of apples and higher quality, better shaped fruit.

And, finally, in a recent article in Scientific American (August 23, 2019) the importance of pollen microorganisms in the diet of a variety of bee species was assessed. Bees are classically described as first order consumers (“herbivores”) in their ecosystems. They occupy Trophic Position 2 (TP2) in their complex food web just above plants (which are TP1’s). Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the U.S Department of Agriculture determined that for many bee species (especially for their pollen fed larvae) the critical nutritional component of the gathered pollen are the bacteria and fungi that inhabit the pollen! Bees, then, according to these authors, should be classified as omnivores (TP2.5) or even as carnivores (TP3.0) due to their dependence on microbial “meat” for food.   (great thanks to Robert Steffes for the link to this very interesting article!).

 

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