Facebook
Twitter
Google Plus
Reddit
Pinterest
Tumblr
Delicious
LinkedIn
StumbleUponPosts Tagged: Eric Mussen
The Buzz About CCD
Entomologists, geneticists and virologists are still searching for the cause of colony collapse disorder (CCD).
Yes, they're still searching, and no, there' s no known cause yet.
CCD is a mysterious phenomonen characterized by adult bees abandoning the hive. They leave behind the brood and stored food.
When we attended the 55th annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America in December 2007, one of the highly attended seminars dealt with the plight of the honey bees. Pennsylvania State University entomologist Dennis vanEngelsdorp and USDA entomologist Jeff Pettis were among those addressing the crowd.
In research just published in PLOS One, a peer-reviewed science publication, they and their colleagues found that a higher total load of pathogens--viruses, bacteria and fungi--appears to show the strongest link yet with CCD.
The researchers examined 91 colonies from 13 apiaries in Florida and California. They screened for bacteria, mites, Nosema (protozoan parasites) numerous viruses, nutrition status and 171 pesticides. They also sampled adult bees, wax comb bee bread (stored and processed pollen) and brood.
"Of 61 quantified variables (including adult bee physiology, pathogen loads, and pesticide levels), no single measure emerged as a most-likely cause of CCDm" they wrote. "Bees in CCD colonies had higher pathogen loads and were co-infected with a greater number of pathogens than control populations, suggesting either an increased exposure to pathogens or a reduced resistance of bees toward pathogens. Levels of the synthetic acaricide coumaphos (used by beekeepers to control the parasitic mite Varroa destructor) were higher in control colonies than CCD-affected colonies."
Their research, the first comprehensive survey of CCD-affected bee populations, suggests that CCD "involves an interaction between pathogens and other stress factors," they wrote. They presented evidence that CCD is "is contagious or the result of exposure to a common risk factor."
Bottom line: High pathogen loads are linked to CCD symptoms, but scientists still don't know what causes bees to become infected with SO MANY pathogens.
What this research does is narrow the direction of future CCD research. It's a big step in the right direction.
"Help the bees" continues to be a resounding cry. Helping to fund the research is Häagen-Dazs (about 50 percent of their ice cream flavors depend on bee pollination). Those visiting their educational Web site can donate funds to Penn State and UC Davis.
Plight of the Honey Bee
Jeff Pettis
The Sting
Beekeepers consider stings just a part of their job.
However, say the word "bee" and John Q. and Jane Q. Public may not think about the pollination of fruits, vegetables and nuts. Or the end product: honey.
The bee conjures up the "S" word: sting.
Of the scores of questions that Extension Apiculturist Eric Mussen has fielded since 1976 (when he joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty), many relate to bee stings.
Here are his answers to some of the most commonly asked questions:
1. Can a honey bee sting kill you?
If a person is highly sensitized to honey bee venom, one sting could be fatal, causing anaphylactic shock. Otherwise, it is just painful and likely to cause some swelling and local tenderness that will last for two or three days.
2. How do you treat a honey bee sting?
Try to remove honey bee stings as quickly as possible, since venom is pumped from a sting into the victim for 45-60 seconds. Stings are easily scraped off with a fingernail. If many honey bees are stinging, leave the area quickly and deal with the stings when you are out of range of the defensive area (about 100 feet with European honey bees, but up to ¼ mile – 1,320 feet – with Africanized honey bees). The pain can be reduced a bit by putting ice on the sting site, but the stabbing pain backs off fairly quickly without any treatment.
3. Can a honey bee hear you?
Honey bees do not have sensory organs that can pick up sounds that we can hear. They are very sensitive to vibrations. They feel us walking toward the nesting site before we get there.
4. Why do beekeepers use smokers when they visit their beehives?
The smoke from the smoker has three effects on the bees. First, it prevents the guard bees from liberating much “alarm pheromone” (smells like bananas) in the hive. Second, it prevents “soldier” bees in the hive from smelling the pheromone that has been secreted. Third, it causes many bees to fill up on honey. Despite the wives’ tales to the contrary, there is no reason to believe that the bees “think” there is a fire or that bees full of honey cannot sting.
5. Can honey bees see color?
Yes, honey bees can see nearly all the colors we see. They cannot see red, which looks black to them. They can see into the UV wavelengths a ways, which is beyond our limit at purple. UV looks black to us.
6. Do honey bees need to eat meat?
No. Unlike wasps, honey bees derive nearly all the important ingredients in their diet from pollens. Pollens contain protein, fats, vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, sterols, and many plant-derived antioxidants. No single pollen contains all the essential ingredients, so colonies do best where a good mix of attractive flowers are available. Nectar, the dilute sugar syrup honey bees collect from flowers, contains mostly sugar, an energy food. The flavor and color of honey depend upon the source of the nectar from which it is condensed.
There you have it: The A, Bee and C of the most commonly asked questions.
Bottom line: Sure, bees can and do sting, but our survival depends on them. Bees pollinate one-third of the food we eat (fruits, vegetables and nuts). They pollinate some 100 crops in California, including about 700,000 acres of almonds.
“The value of California crops pollinated by bees is $6.1 billion,” Mussen says.
Stinger
Site of the Sting
Bee-utiful Work!
Honey bees--what do you know about them?
Do you know what the queen bee, worker bees and drones do? Do you know why bees swarm? Do you want to learn to be a beekeeper? Or, if you already are a beekeeper, how do you keep your hives healthy? If you're a researcher, what are your colleagues doing? Are we closer to finding the cause/causes of colony collapse disorder (CCD)?
You'll find the answers to those questions--and more--on a newly launched Bee Health Web site, the work of Cooperative Extension or "eXtension."
Coordinated by John Skinner, a professor and Extension apiculturist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, this Community of Practices project is the work of scores of experts across the country, including our own Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty. In fact, he and UC Davis native pollinator specialist Robbin Thorp, emeritus professor of entomology, are among those featured in videos on the site. In addition, yours truly has some bee photos on the site.
Our hat (okay, our bee veil) is off to Skinner; vice chairs Keith Delaplane, professor at the University of Georgia; Jeffery Pettis, research leader at the USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Bee Research Laboratory, Beltsville, Md., and IT technologist Michael Wilson, University of Tennessee.
Basically, this is an interactive learning environment connecting scientists with consumers and scientists with scientists. The site includes news, answers, a calendar, self-learning, and feeds.
Skinner hopes this will be the "go to" site for beekeeping information and bee science.
Indeed! This is like having the best and brightest minds in the research laboratories and bee industry at your workplace or in your living room.
If you have a question about bees, all you need do is ask. The cadre of experts will "bee" there for you.
Honey bee on Almond
Pollen-Packing Bee
Not All Sweetness
The honey bee hive is not all sweetness.
The first virgin queen bee to emerge from her cell (each queen cell resembles a peanut shell) will rid the colony of her competition.
After emerging, the queen makes a mark on the other queen cells. That's an indication--or really, an order--for the worker bees to destroy the developing queen inside, says Cooperative Extension Apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty..
There can, after all, be only one queen bee in the hive.`
"The queen bee develops from a fertilized egg that hatches three days after being laid," wrote authors Eric Mussen, Len Foote, Norman Gary, Harry Laidlaw, Robbin Thorp and Lee Watkins in the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources booklet, Beekeeping in California, published in 1987. "Nurse bees, a class of worker bee, feed developing queen larvae a special diet consisting mostly of the royal jelly that they secrete from their glands. This special diet shortens the time spent to reach maturity to 16 days, compared with 21 days for the worker bee and 24 for the drone (male). The result is a bee larger than any others, with fully developed ovaries and a very large abdomen."
"The queen," they explain, "is reared in a large cell resembling a peanut shell that hangs vertically from the comb and about 10 days after emerging, she becomes sexually mature."
Then she takes one or more mating flights, mates with 10 to 20 drones, and returns to the hive to spend the rest of her life laying eggs. In her two-to-three-year life span, she'll lay about 1000 eggs a day. In peak season, she'll lay about 2000 eggs a day.
She's queen for the day, and every day.
Queen Cell
The Shirt Off Her Back
UC Davis bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, manager of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr., Honey Bee Research Facility, is the kind of person who would give you the shirt off her back.
Really.
And that's exactly what she did when several visitors recently toured the Laidlaw facility.
Cobey let one visitor borrow her long-sleeved denim shirt. Then, bare-armed, Cobey opened a hive to display the colony. That says two things: her generosity and the temperament of her bees: gentle.
"Sue's bees are polite," observed beekeeper Steve Godlin of Visalia, vice chair of the California State Apiary board member, duirng an apiar board meeting Oct. 3, 2008 at the Laidlaw facility.
Indeed they are.
Apiary visitors are customarily issued a bee veil, and, depending on the activity taking place and the time of year, may also be provided a full protective suit.
Or a long-sleeved shirt from Cobey.
That's just one of the things that Cobey does behind the scenes.
Update: For her contributions to the Laidlaw facility, the university and the bee industry, she recently received a citation for excellence from the UC Davis Staff Assembly. She was one of 21 individuals, plus 13 teams, receiving the award at a ceremony in the courtyard of Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef's home.
Some 6000 staff employees were eligible for the award sform a total pool of 12,000 UC Davis staff, according to Staff Assembly coordinator Tiva Lasier.
“
Cobey was praised for raising awareness for the plight of honey bees at local, state, national and global levels. She maintains a close relationship with the beekeeping industry at all levels, especially the California Bee Breeders, who produce half the nation’s supply of mated queen honey bees. “If an individual beekeeper is having trouble, she takes a personal interest in solving the problem as if the bees were hers,” the nomination letter read.
Cobey maintains collaborative research projects with many honey bee researchers in the
Cobey, who joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology in May 2007 from
“Our nominee treats bees as she does people: both politely and respectively,” said UC Cooperative Extension Apiculturist Eric Mussen, a member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty since 1976.
Indeed she does.
Susan Cobey
First story | Previous 5 stories | Next 5 stories | Last story
