ARS Information Service
Kim Kaplan

October 1, 2021, Baton Rouge, La.– Honey bees could possibly be deliberately bred to thrive on vegetation which can be already regionally current and even solely on synthetic diets, in accordance with a latest U.S. Division of Agriculture Agricultural Analysis Service (ARS) research.

ARS researchers discovered particular person bees reply otherwise to the identical food regimen and that there’s a robust genetic element concerned in how they reply to vitamin. This factors on to the idea that managed bees may be deliberately bred to do higher on totally different diets, whether or not you’re speaking about a man-made food regimen or a food regimen primarily based on particular vegetation already rising in an space, defined lead researcher Vincent A. Ricigliano. He’s with the ARS Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics, and Physiology Analysis Laboratory in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

“City growth, fashionable agricultural programs and environmental alterations resulting from local weather change, invasive vegetation, and even native landscaping preferences have all had a hand in regionalizing vegetation that dominate out there pollen. It might probably be extra helpful to tailor honey bees to do higher on what’s already out there as an alternative of working onerous to suit the atmosphere to the bees,” Ricigliano mentioned.

The general goal could be breeding to enhance nutrient use by managed honey bees, like we now have performed for poultry and cattle breeding packages, Ricigliano defined.

“Now that we all know there’s room for genetic adaptation to food regimen, we might additionally take a look at breeding honey bees with improved nutrient effectivity or figuring out genotype biomarkers that reply to numerous dietary supplements to advertise honey bee well being,” he added.

In most industrial apiaries, honey bees should not have the chance to naturally breed to adapt to native situations as a result of industrial beekeepers sometimes change the queen in every colony yearly. The queen in a colony is the one bee that lays eggs to provide the subsequent technology.

Beekeepers normally buy new queens already inseminated from a handful of queen breeders in the US. In consequence, honey bees throughout the nation typically have the identical vary of genes for dietary responses with none specialised adaptation.

Honey bees have already been efficiently bred for a only a few chosen traits, amongst them Varroa mite resistance. Varroa mites are among the many single largest drawback afflicting honey bees in the US at this time.

“It was a little bit shocking to seek out after we began this research that, regardless of a large physique of analysis pertaining to honey bee vitamin, comparatively little is understood in regards to the results of genetic variation on dietary response,” Ricigliano mentioned.

His subsequent step is to refine information about what genes management which nutrient and metabolic pathways and the place the best quantity of genetic variation exists in order that breeding plans may be particular and scientifically guided.

The Agricultural Analysis Service is the U.S. Division of Agriculture’s chief scientific in-house analysis company. Day by day, ARS focuses on options to agricultural issues affecting America. Every greenback invested in agricultural analysis leads to $17 of financial impression.