Honeybee queens too conservative in the bedroom

The answer to the decline in honeybee numbers could lay in the bedroom habits of the queen say University of Leeds scientists.

Male honeybees should be queuing up to breed with the queen

Dr Bill Hughes, from the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds, said: “By making sure queens mate with enough genetically variable males, we may be able to boost resistance levels and so protect our honeybee populations from disease attacks like the ones we have seen hitting the US.”

It could be that the loss of honeybees causes the number and variety of potential mates for a queen to becoming too low to maintain genetic diversity and therefore disease resistant populations.

“Given the choice, queen honeybees will typically mate with up to 12 different male partners in a matter of minutes and some with over 20. The record is the giant Asian honeybee whose queens normally mate with well over 40 males - and in one case was found to have mated with over a hundred.”

The Leeds scientists will be examining the question of genetic resistance by studying honeybee reactions to a common fungus parasite called Chalkbrood, under carefully controlled laboratory conditions. The fungus, already found in the majority of UK hives, infects and ‘eats’ larvae, giving them a chalky appearance. Individual larvae die but the parasite rarely kills the whole colony.

Dr Hughes and his team think infections by hidden parasites in genetically susceptible bees may be combining with other factors to produce a lethal ‘perfect storm’ which overwhelms their defences. In 2008, US average losses of honeybee colonies were 35%, with some beekeepers losing 90% of their colonies.

Honeybee survival is vital to the protection of our food supplies because they pollinate up to a third of the food we grow in the UK.