Undergraduate Research at Virginia Tech

Takin’ Care of Bees-ness

By Emily Olsen, marketing management

Most people's encounters with bees aren't particularly pleasant. The agony of a sting leaves little room for positive thoughts about the insect; however, Kat Connors, a junior in biology and an undergraduate researcher at Virginia Tech, doesn't think they're so bad. Connors knows that a sting here and there is a small sacrifice to make in order to learn more about the insect that plays such a vital role in our lives.

Honeybees are managed for honey and wax production, but perhaps more importantly, they serve as extremely important pollinators - many crop and citrus industries would not survive without them. Connors teamed up with Rick Fell, a professor of entomology, for a year of research to help understand the adversities facing honeybee populations in Virginia.

A study abroad trip to South Africa with two professors and 11 students provided Connors with more than just some great summer memories. She hit it off with Fell, one of the two professors on the trip, and scored a research gig to determine the impact of parasitic mites on honeybee health.

The beekeeping industry is faced with the constant threat of varroa and tracheal mites. Varroa mites are small, external parasites and tracheal mites are internal microscopic parasites that enter the bee's air holes and feed on their trachea, or breathing tubes. To combat this problem, beekeepers began treating their hives with miticides, including Apistan, coumaphos, and thymol, and have now been doing so for a number of years. The use of miticides proved to be an effective measure to keep mite levels down. However, observing a recent decline in the reproductive success of honeybee queens, Fell, a highly respected entomologist among the beekeeping industry, suspects that miticides may be the culprit. Fell thinks that the miticides may be reducing the reproductive ability of the honeybees - and that's exactly what Connors was assigned to research.

To figure out how the bees were being affected by one of the miticides, thymol, Connors had to test both the queen and drones (male bees) for their reproductive viability. For Connors, this meant getting sperm counts from the thymol-treated bees and comparing the results with the control bees.

The first step was to test the queen bee, which is the only female bee that's able to mate with the drones in the colony. Connors carefully dissected the queens, extracting their fragile spermatheca, the organ for storing sperm. She then mixed the spermatheca into a solution containing a florescent stain that is absorbed by the DNA in the sperm. When the solution was placed under a microscope, she could count how many sperm were living and how many were dead, based on the color the sperm fluoresced.

To test the drones, Connors had to squeeze their abdomens, inducing the bees to secrete semen for testing. The sperm from the drones was also tested for viability by doing counts of live and dead sperm under a florescent microscope. Connors was finding slightly more dead sperm in the thymol-treated hives compared to the untreated hives. However, the data collected were not sufficient to prove a significant difference between the two. Connors believes that with further testing, she and Fell will find results that will confirm their hypothesis.

Connors and Fell started a second research project to examine the incidence of tracheal mites in managed colonies throughout the state. Fell used his connections in the beekeeping world and had beekeepers throughout Virginia send him several sets of 50 thymol-treated bees and 50 control bees from various hives.

Connors's responsibility was to take each bee and make a cross-section through their thorax. She then placed the cross-section in a solution of potassium hydroxide, which dissolved the dense muscular tissue bees use for flight, exposing the tracheal tubes. Connors analyzed the tubes under a microscope for the presence of thracheal mite infestations. Any visible brown spots were an indication of the presence of mites. Her results for both the control and treated groups showed an extremely small percentage of the bees actually had any kind of mites present in their trachea. Connor's data suggest that honey bees are developing a natural resistance to tracheal mites.

The low percentage of mites along with the low sperm counts from the previous study gave Connors and Fell confidence that their research is heading in the right direction. Connors hopes that beekeepers everywhere will pay attention to their findings and will discontinue or reduce the use of miticides on their honeybee hives.

Questions with Kat Connors

Q: If I get stung by a bee, can I get stung by any bee in the hive?
A: If you get stung, you are being stung by a sterile female worker bee. But actually, bees have an unfair reputation because about 80 percent of stings are due to wasps, like yellow jackets and hornets, not bees! Anyway, all worker bees have stingers because they are responsible for protecting the colony, as well as all other labor activities. The drones are male bees and lack stingers. Their sole purpose in life is to mate with the queen.

Q: How does a queen bee get selected?
A: Females hatch from fertilized eggs, and all have the potential to become a queen. However, only one larvae is selected to become a queen by the adult worker bees. We still don't know how they decide which larvae, but they feed her the "royal jelly," a pollen jelly-like substance that is extremely high in sugar and nutrients. Over time, she develops huge ovaries and is then responsible for producing new offspring. The queen remains in the center of the hive and is tended to by the workers. The quality of a colony, its success, is all dependent on the queen. The strength of the queen determines the strength of the colony.

Q: It seems like you would get stung a lot working with bees. Have you found that to be true?
A: When we approach the hive we bring a smoker and smoke the bees as we open the hive. The smoke disorients them and causes them to be more passive. We also wear protective clothing, especially over our heads. I've been stung several times, usually because I was being a little careless and didn't fully protect myself. Dr. Fell is crazy, though, he's been stung thousands of times over the years. He often doesn't even bother to wear the protective clothing. Like many beekeepers, he has developed an immunity to the toxins in the sting. So he just feels a prick and brushes it off. But I still swell up quite a bit! I am working on my immunity.

Learn more about Beekeeping at Virginia Tech and about Richard Fell.