WSDA lab a-buzz for honey bee health
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor buzzing bees stays couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds!” Okay, maybe that isn’t quite how the unofficial motto of the US Postal Service goes, but these days, maybe it should bee….er, be.
This summer, USPS has been delivering live honey bees to WSDA’s Plant Protection and Molecular Diagnostic Lab (PPMDL). Live honey bees from 19 western states and territories are arriving daily at the lab — even on the weekends — for genetic testing for honey bee pathogens.
How do you ship live bees? Carefully.
Shipping bees so that they arrive alive at their intended destination is no easy task. It starts at the apiary, where an inspector collects a few honey bees from several hives. (The small amount collected does not impact the overall health/viability of the hive.) The collected bees are funneled into a ventilated box with multiple metal screens, provided with water and a sugary snack, and shipped the same day. While in transit, they must be kept from heat and well-ventilated. If all goes to plan, most of the bees arrive in good condition at the lab.
The bees are being shipped to the lab as part of a national effort to monitor for honey bee pathogens with the National Honey Bee Survey. The National Honey Bee Survey is a voluntary survey that beekeepers participate in. Although the survey has been conducted annually since 2009, this is the first year that PPMDL has been tapped to help look for honey bee pathogens for the western half of the United States.
Why ship live bees?
While it might not be evident from television crime shows, the genetic material needed to test for some pathogen types begins to decay as soon as the host organism dies. To test for these pathogens, the bees must arrive at the lab alive. Once logged and accounted for, the bees are then placed in a -80 degree Celsius (-112 degrees Fahrenheit — yeah, really, really cold!) freezer, which both quickly euthanizes the bees and preserves genetic material for testing.
Testing bees is cool work
Once the lab is ready to look for genetic evidence of various pathogens on the bees, a multi-step process takes place. The bees are kept chilled throughout the process to preserve the genetic material.
Walking from the freezer to the lab, the tube of frozen bees is kept in a cooler. A subsample of 50 bees is then counted out into a tray resting on ice. These bees are placed into a special cold-tolerant bag, which is then dipped into liquid nitrogen to drop the temperature of the bees even further. This not only helps preserve the genetic material but also makes it easier to pulverize the bees for extraction.
Once crushed, a special solution is added to the bag to break down cell walls, and the liquid and bees are massaged in the bag to help release the genetic material. At this point, the liquid contains suspended genetic material. A portion of this liquid is piped out of the bag into a small vial, which returns (again being transported on ice) to the -80 freezer until ready for genetic testing.
Busy as a bee
PPMDL is expecting to process a whopping 400 boxes of bees to look for bee pathogens. The results are submitted to USDA and the participating apiaries. This is the first time that USDA has selected two labs to process the bees. Previously, all bee samples were shipped to Maryland. Now, with a testing lab in the west, the bees do not have to travel as far and are more likely to arrive alive. And with two labs working through the samples, the results will be available more quickly.
Learn more about the National Honey Bee Survey at the links below:
- Video link to RNA sample processing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xijhSbgC2I
- Video link to Apiary sampling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH53nZ7gYY4
- USDA link to project overview: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant-pests-diseases/honey-bee-surveys