'Clean-up' bees could save endangered hives

The newspaper The Observer, on Sunday 9th November 2008, has an article about a British scientist who is trying to breed a better Bee that will keep its hive clean from different types of diseases. This should help stop the decline in Bee numbers.

A British scientist is hoping to reverse the critical decline of the honeybee by breeding 'cleaner bees' to protect hives from potentially devastating diseases.

Francis Ratnieks, the UK's only professor of apiculture, is undertaking pioneering research based on a breed of worker bee genetically programmed to keep hives clean. So-called 'hygienic' bees are responsible for removing dead pupae and larvae from hives, but they only exist in very small numbers.

The Sussex University academic believes that, if more of them can be artificially bred, they will protect hives from parasites such as the varroa mite which last year killed two billion honeybees and wiped out one in three colonies.

'Hygienic bees have a strong tendency to clean things up, removing pupae and larvae if they are dead or dying,' said Ratnieks, who has been studying bees, ants and wasps for 25 years. 'What this hygiene can do is control certain types of disease, particularly diseases of the brood like chalkbrood, American foulbrood and varroa mite.’

There is still the false idea that declining Bee numbers will have a disastrous affect on crops, but this has all happened before and to a much greater scale. At the beginning of the 20th century 90% of honeybees were wiped out.