Location: Invasive Species and Pollinator Health
Project Number: 2030-21000-055-014-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jun 1, 2024
End Date: Jun 1, 2028
Objective:
Develop collaborative research efforts on honey bee health, colony performance for sustainable delivery of pollination services. To determine the impacts of poor nutrition and diseases on honey bee health and colony performance and in collaboration with USDA scientists, establish remote colony monitoring sensors in the apiaries of beekeeper stakeholders for long-term longitudinal censusing procedures, generating yearly datasets on colony and environmental parameters and analyzing these parameters in relation to honey bee health.
Approach:
The USDA Invasive Species and Pollinator Health Research Unit will continue collaborations with the Bee Biology Lab of the University of California Davis, Department of Entomology and Nematology, on different projects aimed at improving honey bee health and colony performance. Bee colonies in UC Davis apiaries and molecular lab space will be made available to USDA researchers. In addition, cooperator apiaries and methods to assess colony performance will be shared with local stakeholders. Molecular lab methods to determine the impacts of different types of pollen nutrition on honey bee health and behavior will be developed and the efforts will ensure that both parties are able to depend on each other and bolster lab performance when personnel are limiting. Collecting, processing and analyzing pollen samples from cooperator apiaries will be completed collaboratively. USDA researchers and UC Davis collaborators will work jointly developing protocols to assess queen performance, gene expression of important genes relating to mite loads as well as different pollen types fed to colonies. Together research personnel, support staff and cooperators will develop and standardize protocols for automated hive monitoring sensors that will be coupled with RNAseq analysis as this will be instrumental in conducting a systems biology analysis to improve honey bee health and a connected hive systems across California. In addition to joint peer reviewed publication, outcomes will be evaluated and promoted in cooperation with the University of California (UC) Cooperative Extension Service specialists. Program enhancements will thus be directly transferred to end-users as the program advances through direct application and assessment.
