alt Hacker NewsSpider venom kills varroa mites without harming honeybees
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Honeybees are not native to North America.
It is great and currently necessary we use them the way we do. It makes one wonder in the age of AI and evolving farm practices, can we start finding ways to cultivate already-climate-adapted native bees to do the work? Can we leverage adaptations for specific crops?
I get it that honeybees work great at pollinating monoculture fields, etc., but that does not change the fact we are perpetuating a square peg in round hole problem and pushing it very very far right now, at greater and greater cost, all while climate change is fighting us.
The hard truth these days is that the work of bee keeping is like 80% keeping the mites in check. Plus all current treatments render the honey inedible so you can only do it at the end of the season.
Powdered sugar is the standard treatment for removing varroa mites that have emerged from capped cells.
"The peptides killed only the mites, while the bees survived."
What benefits do these new treatments offer? They certainly won't be cheaper.
https://www.honeybeesuite.com/can-powdered-sugar-control-var...
Edit: "Treatments every week killed more mites than treatments every two weeks, which killed more mites than treatments every month... The only treatment schedule that effectively suppressed mites over long periods was once per week... sugar dusting has been found to significantly reduce adult mite populations at times when little brood is present."
IIRC the Asian honey bee is more resilient to mites
Some potentially seriously good news there if it all pans out the way it sounds like it might. Fingers crossed for the bees!
Kinda related, but in my house I don’t kill spiders, as long as they are in the corners they can live rent free while cleaning other bugs. Before, one time I went and killed all of them, in less than a week I started seeing sliverfish and similar bugs, I realized I messed up the natural order, so I just keep em now!
So what's it going to do to the honey? Will we have spider venom laced honey?
Another terrible MCU spin-off
Genuinely thought this was a new marvel character lol
Still the honeybees keep on dying ...
Perhaps it is time to stop blaming the mites for the decline of the honeybees.
Check out Paul Stamets' research using Mycelium to give honeybees an immuneboost.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-32194-8