Researchers Develop Bee Sperm Bank in Hopes of Creating a Super Bee

Researchers at Washington State University announced plans to open a “bee sperm bank” as well as employ genetic cross-breeding methods in order to produce a super bee they hope will not succumb to colony collapse disorder.

Concerns over the honey bee, though a constant topic in the news, are not news.

In 1922, shortly after tracheal mites were identified as the likely cause of bee deaths on England’s Isle of Wight, the United States restricted the importation of live honey bees, effectively preventing the parasites from reaching the nation’s shores until 1984.

However, once they did, just a few years later a more serious threat, the Varroa mite, made its way across the border.

“The Varroa mite feeds on the developing bees, or brood, and also introduces bacteria and viruses that damage the health of the hive,” Susan Cobey, a WSU research associate working on the project said.

They’re so deadly, Cobey said, they are known to wipe out an entire colony in just two years if a beekeeper does not interfere. Even if they do, project leader and professor of etymology Steve Sheppard lamented that intervention usually means chemical miticides, which are tolerated by bees in a short time, but cause harm over the long term as chemical residues accumulate in hives.

Creating a resistant breed of an organism in order to combat a threat to the species not new either; however, U.S. entomologists were originally forced, in this case, to contend with a limited honey bee gene pool as as result of the import ban that lasted for so long.

Thus, in an effort to find and utilize the needed genes, the USDA granted WSU a permit in 2008 to import honey bee semen for breeding purposes, subject to strict screening for viruses.

Taking only from the best, the scientists collected semen from Italian bees who are known to reproduce quickly and in order to create a bee resilient to the cold,

Sheppard and his team have been collecting semen from bees of the eastern Alps and mountains located in the country of Georgia. Finally, the researchers plan on mixing the strongest stock from Europe with the United States’ strongest.

And since live semen will survive at room temperature for about 10 to 14 days, Cobey has exactly that much time to collect the semen and either freeze it or inject it into the selected queen bee’s oviduct.

Meanwhile, the question of how to store the genetic material for years, was solved with the help of Sheppard’s graduate student Brandon Hopkins who discovered that liquid nitrogen maintains the semen viability for decades, helping to preserve imperiled subspecies in a honey bee genetic repository for generations to come.