All About Honey Bee Colony Health

Bug Squad

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Happenings in the insect world

Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey

Published on: September 27, 2013

Jay Evans

(Editor's Note: Due to the government shutdown, this seminar has been cancelled.)

It's a topic we've all been waiting for: "Honey Bee Health and Disease Resistance."

Jay Evans, a research entomologist with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) Beltsville Bee Research Laboratory for the past 14 years, will discuss "Bee Disease Resistance and Colony Health" on Wednesday, Oct. 2 to open the fall seminar series hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.

His lecture, open to all interested persons, is from 12:10 to 1 p.m. in Room 122 of Briggs Hall, located on Kleiber Hall Drive, UC Davis campus.

"Honey bees are vulnerable to poor nutrition, parasites and pathogens, and exposure to chemicals," Evans said. "These threats can occur in batches and little is known about the impacts of multiple challenges to honey bee health, and about the abilities of bees to fend off these threats. I will present recent work aimed at determining the impacts of multiple parasites on bee health. I will also discuss the impacts Varroa mites, chemicals, and bacterial symbionts on bee health and colony losses."

As a research entomologist, Evans has focused his projects on a range of bee pests including bacteria, fungi, viruses and, mites, and beetles. He is especially interested in the immune defenses of bees toward these threats.

Evans was an early proponent of the Honey Bee Genome Project and helped recruit and organize scientists interested in applied genomics for bees. He has improved and applied genetic screens for possible causes of colony collapse disorder and is now heading a consortium to sequence the genome of the Varroa mite in order to develop novel control methods for this key pest.

Evans holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Princeton and a doctorate in biology from the University of Utah.

The fall seminars, coordinated by faculty members Joanna Chiu and Brian Johnson, will be held every Wednesday noon through Dec. 11 in 122 Briggs Hall, except for Nov. 27, Thanksgiving Week, when no seminar will be held.

Under the coordination of professor James R. Carey, all seminars are to be videotaped and posted at a later date on UCTV.

Anyone with a computer can view the seminars, and yes, they're free.

Inside the hive. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Varroa mite on a drone pupa. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Tags: bee research (5), honey bees (422), Jay Evans (2), UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology (695), varroa mites (12)

Comments: 1

Comments:

by Andy Cannella

on October 1, 2013 at 1:59 PM

Last fall I was given a hive and re-queened with an Italian queen soon afterward. It had a single deep super for brood and honey for the bees with a queen excluder separating it from a medium super above. I added a deep supper above the brood box and queen excluder for the bees to fill with honey to get them through the next winter and put the medium super on top of that. I used a feeder and protected the hive from the cold over that first winter (it snows here in Auganga, CA), installed a source of water near the hive and have been generally pampering them as much as I could. In spring and through much of the summer there were wildflowers for miles around and the hive seemed to be thriving. Just as the Redshank started to bloom I put together 2 additional medium supers to catch the honey flow. When I inspected the still active hive I was surprised to find the no drawn comb in the medium super, very little drawn comb in the top deep super and minimal capped comb in the bottom supper. I contacted a local beekeeper and was told he was seeing the same thing in his commercial hives. A week later I found the hive empty. I inspected the bottom deep super and found no capped honey but quite a few pollen cells. There were also no queen cells. Very disappointing as I was thinking I'd be taking in my first honey harvest around this time. Any ideas as to what might have happened? Any suggestions? I planning to start again next spring with a nuc.