Parasites such as the varroa mite are high on the list of suspects for the high mortality rate of honeybees, vital in pollinating a third of the food eaten by people. Pesticides, disease, poor nutrition and habitat loss also are factors. To honeybees, a varroa mite “is basically like having a six-pound house cat attached to your side, sucking the life out of you,” says the NPR blog, The Salt. A cooperative of 100 beekeepers from Michigan to Tennessee is part of an experiment to create a natural solution. They are raising hardy queen bees that were artificially inseminated by bees bred at Purdue University to have grooming behavior that fights mites.
“The bees will take the mite and they will bite the legs and chew on the mite,” Pennsylvania beekeeper Jeff Berta told NPR. “And if they bite a leg off of the mite, the mite will bleed to death. So the bees are actually fighting back.” The challenges for beekeepers is to spread the new, mite-fighting genetics as widely as possible. Otherwise, the valuable trait will disappear through natural breeding. So, the cooperative gives eggs with the new genetics to neighbors. “Genetics with honeybees is more like a river and the river is always changing,” said Berta.