Honeybees Have An Unsuspecting Pest

"Bee Happy" garden sign. (Photo by Olivia Morales)

Spring has sprung at California State University, Fullerton's arboretum and there is an expected "super bloom" with flowers and plants! This is thanks to the recent surprising and excessive rain in Southern California as well as honeybees.

Even though the rain has helped plants grow, the rain and weather have been a risk for honeybees. And not only that, there's another unsuspecting threat to bees: varroa "destructor" mites.

Varroa mites are responsible for as high as 30-35% of bees lost in a single year nationally Approximately one in three to one in four honeybees are bitten. These mites interfere with honeybees' communication and can result in death of the honeybee.

Varroa mite under a microscope. (Photo by Olivia Morales)

Dr. Sara Johnson and her students are hard at work at the apiary at the Fullerton Arboretum. Dr. Johnson is an Evolutionary Anthropology professor at California State University, Fullerton and is the founder of her project Urban Agriculture Community Based Research Experience (U-ACRE). Three of her many students recently spoke up about their majors, what they're studying with U-ACRE, and their hopes of how they can help save the bees.

• Steve Anticona is an Environmental Studies graduate student and his research research involves learning about the relationships between honey bees and honeybee reproduction and their allocation of resources.
• Emily Holden is currently studying for a major in English and a minor in Anthropology. Her goal is to work with library science and by working here I get the opportunity to test the ideas of linking media with data collection through varroa mite research.
• Gabriella Funes is studying for a degree in Biology with emphasis in Biotechnology. She's interested in looking into honeybee grooming behavior and hygienic behavior in response to varroa mites. 

"I think the significance of it to our food system, people need to understand is very high and I don’t see a lot of energy devoted to it," said Johnson.

Dr. Johnson shares that varroa mite research has been overlooked and that not a lot of people who don't take care of bees are not aware of it.

"A lot of this I didn’t know before I joined the program with the mites and like all the other things to consider when it comes to the colony and how the colony works," said Anticona.

Dr. Johnson shares why her and her students are specifically focused on varroa mite research and how many bees in their colonies have them. They also study honey production and pollination levels.

"Bees At Work" sign in front of the Fullerton Arboretum apiary. (Photo by Olivia Morales)

"If there's lots of these mites in the colony, it makes them very prone to failure. Failure in the sense that it weakens them and interrupts their communication," said Anticona. "These dynamics are kind of like what researches are trying to understand. Like if you feed them honey at a certain time of the year does it have a better effect versus a different time of the year. When do you apply the treatment for mites? Once a year, four times a year?"

Honeybees are able to remove mites off of each other, but with all the other chores and work that they have to do, there sometimes might not necessarily be enough time for grooming, which leads to the mites hitching a ride on them for longer.

"One of the behaviors that bees do is grooming. So, they clean themselves of anything that may be like, toxic, or any parasites. It’s part of the normal communication that happens within the colony. This method is what’s known as the natural mite fall," said Anticona.

Mite fall is a method of which the varroa mites are collected. An oiled grate is put into the bottom of the bees' box and over time as the bees groom themselves, the bees will pick off the mites from each other and the mites will fall into the grate.

"It also gets a little complicated because that’s when we talk about energy a lot, so if you think of a group of bees their job is not only to groom themselves they have to take care of the larva, the babies, they have to go out there and get food, some of them have to clean the hive. There’s all these things that need to happen and on top of that they have the parasites. So how much of their energy and their time should be spent on grooming?" said Anticona.

Honeybees pollinating Cherry Blossoms. (Photo by Olivia Morales)

There's a lot that goes into saving the bees, more so than what people realize. the first step is to get more educated about honeybees, varroa mites, and colony collapse, and hopefully that is what this article has done so for readers.