Scientists winning fight to beat honey bee mite (From York Press)

Scientists winning fight to beat honey bee mite

8:40am Wednesday 5th January 2011 in News By Dan Bean, dan.bean@thepress.co.uk

A Varroa mite attached to a honey bee

SCIENTISTS in North Yorkshire have helped develop a new treatment which could help stop the extinction of the honey bee in the UK.

Researchers from the Government’s National Bee Unit based at the Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera), at Sand Hutton, near York, worked with the University of Aberdeen to create a treatment which could halt the decline of the bee population.

Scientists said the decline of the honey bee population, which has fallen by 23 per cent since 1992, was mainly due to the blood-sucking Varroa mite, which has developed a resistance to beekeepers’ medication.

Dr Giles Budge, from Fera, said the treatment, which uses Nobel Prize-winning theory called RNA interference, was “environmentally-friendly and poses no threat to the bees.

“With appropriate support from industry and a rigorous approval process, chemical-free medicines could be available in five to ten years.”

The Varroa mite injects bees with a virus which weakens the bee before drinking its blood, and scientists said 1,000 mites could kill a colony of up to 50,000 bees if left untreated.

The mite has been in the UK since 1992, and since then the number of UK bee colonies has dropped from 151,924 to just over 116,000.

When the treatment is introduced to a neutral Varroa gene, it “silences” it with no significant effect on the mite, and scientists hope they can target a gene which would cause the Varroa to self destruct.

Dr Alan Bowman, from the University of Aberdeen, said: “The beauty of this approach is that it is really specific and targets the mites without harming the bees, or, indeed, any other animal.”

Previous scientific tests have shown that the treatment can be added to hives in bee feed, which is the favourite hiding place of the mite.