By Rachel Fioret, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Woolwich Observer
Given the importance of bees, and the growing awareness of the threats they face, it’s no surprise that the creatures are the subject of a great deal of research at the University of Guelph.
“Honey bees are the most important pollinators world wide,” said Prof. Ernesto Guzman, director of the university’s Honey Bee Research Centre.
Researchers focus on stressed honey bee environments, with the long-term goal of understanding how to improve the health and quality of life for populations.
Honey bees service crop pollination, which translates into food production. Approximately 30 per cent of food in Western societies is produced as a result of honey bee pollination.
“Managed honey bees are today subjected to very powerful stressors they were not subjected to 25 or 30 years ago. Our research focuses on analyzing the effect of those stressors on the health and behaviour and productivity of honey bee colonies,” Guzman explained.
Guzman and his research team chose three common stressors that have a big impact on the health behaviour, survival and performance of honey bee colonies: two pathogens – varroa and nosema – and pesticides.
“We’re trying to understand how those stressors affect bee health, how the bees react to those stressors to stay healthy, and how we can help them control the impact of these stressors,” he said.
“We have tested the impact of pesticides, what we call external pesticides and internal pesticides, on the health and behaviour. What we call internal pesticides are miticides used by beekeepers to control raw mites in their colonies.
“Those are pesticides that the beekeeper introduces into the hive to control the mites in there and they are not innocuous to the bees, they are harmful to the bees, to some degree.”
Guzman noted that the research centre has been informing beekeepers about which products not to use, and which can be used in order to cause the least damage to the bees.
“And then we can talk about the external pesticides, which are the ones that are used by growers in crop plantations or in their orchards. And of course, bees forage for the flowers that have been treated with pesticides,” Guzman said.
The centre’s research is finding specific formulations to control the varroa mite, netting positive results.
“We’re finding additives for artificial diets for honey bees to improve their health and behaviour. Some of the additives that we’re testing have not been tested in bees by anybody else in the world,” said Guzman.
“What we’re testing on the bees is giving us good preliminary results.”
The centre’s published work can be picked up by other researchers who want to conduct their own studies, which might have more applied aims to help the industry control the impact of stressors.
“The results with the most direct impact have improved the health of bees is the development of new formulations of miticides to control varroa mites,” said Guzman.
The Honey Bee Research Centre works to improve life for honey bees and spread awareness to the community. It’s home to a team of about 20 people, including technicians, students and volunteers.
The research centre also focuses on education, reaching more than 800 students a year via its a honey bee course. It also offers courses to the general public who want to learn more about honey bees or become a beekeeper.
Those are hands-on courses, said Guzman.
“We have some theoretical classes there, but at the same time, next to the classroom, we have the beehives and the experience opening hives, handling frames with bees, recognizing the different components of a hive, the different types of bees in the hive, how to control diseases, how to prepare the hives for the winter and how to manage the hives in the spring and summer.”
The research centre is also currently undergoing renovations thanks to multi-million-dollar donations. The money will go towards creating a space that will attract more resources and connections with researchers and students.
Among the current research, Dr. Sabrina Rondeau, who earned her PhD. in environmental sciences at the University of Guelph, is studying the impact of agriculture on wild ground-nesting bees in field crops.
Rondeau, alongside Dr. Nigel Raine, has discovered an interesting finding: when hibernating, bumble bee queens are more likely to choose pesticide-contaminated soil rather than clean soil.
“My research focuses on understanding how bumblebee queens, which are crucial for the survival of bumble bee colonies, interact with pesticide-contaminated soils during a key phase of their lifecycle: hibernation,” Rondeau explained.
“Bumble bee queens spend several months hibernating in the soil during winter, and the soil they choose for this hibernation period can be contaminated with a variety of pesticides commonly used in agriculture.
“In our recent study, we wanted to find out if bumble bee queens can detect and avoid soil contaminated with pesticides, or if they might be attracted to it,” she said. “What we found is surprising. Instead of avoiding contaminated soils, the queens were actually more likely to choose pesticide-contaminated soils over clean soil.”
That finding raises concerns that the exposure to pesticides could increase the risk of negative impacts on the health and reproduction of bees.
Rondeau’s research project explores a largely unexamined aspect of pesticide exposure in bees, their interaction with soil contamination, particularly during the crucial hibernation phase of bumble bee queens.
“Our study shifts the focus to the soil environment, an often overlooked but vital habitat for bumble bee queens during winter.”
Those findings could lead to new areas of research into bee behaviour, sensory perception, and better-informed agricultural practices aimed at minimizing risks to bees and improving pollinator health, she noted.
Be the first to comment