Honey bee research at
Warwick Crop Centre
Dave Chandler, Liam Harvey & Gill Prince
The European honeybee, Apis mellifera, is well known as an
important pollinator of crops, garden plants and wildflowers and
a producer of honey and wax. Populations of A. mellifera face
serious threats from parasites and diseases that are making
beekeeping increasingly challenging.
Research at the Warwick Crop Centre
aims to find new solutions to honey bee
diseases. At the same time, we are
doing basic research to understand
better the interactions between honey
bees and their pathogens and parasites.
© The British Beekeeping Association
Biological control of the varroa mite
Our Defra funded research has found that varroa is very susceptible
to entomopathogenic fungi in lab experiments done at different
spatial scales, and strains of fungi have been identified that kill
varroa but have no effect on bees. Application techniques that
allow varroa mites to be treated quickly and effectively in bee hives
are possible. Work is now required to evaluate efficacy at the field
scale, to develop formulation and application systems for fungal
spores, and measure the fate and behaviour of fungal inoculum.
Exploiting the honey bee genome sequence
We have developed a honey bee DNA microarray, which allows us to
quantify patterns of gene expression in honey bees following infection
by parasites or other treatments . We have used the array with
Rothamsted researchers to investigate why different behavioural
groups of honey bees (foragers and hive bees) are not equally
susceptible to a fungal pathogen. This work complements our joint
BBSRC PhD studentship that investigates the effects of parasitic
diseases on bee behaviour.
Warwick Crop Centre
www.warwick.ac.uk/go/wcc