As colonies dwindle, Lincoln beekeeper thinks new drug could be the bee’s knees

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Last year, nearly 50% of all bee colonies managed by beekeepers in the U.S. were lost, according to a report from UNL.

Troy Anderson, an entomologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said one of the major threats to the bees is the varroa mite, a parasite that spreads viruses.

But Anderson and a team from Louisiana State University have developed a drug that stimulates the bees’ immune systems to protect against viruses spread by the mites.

Buzz Vance, who’s been keeping bees for over 40 years near Lincoln, said the mites have been a problem for decades.

“Everybody’s got varroa mite and the viruses; it’s a must-address in my book,” he said. “By now, early August, the mite population is starting to peak, and they can just overwhelm a colony with virus.”

Vance said any beekeeper will regularly lose some of their colony over the winter; it’s just a matter of how much is lost.

“People that have higher losses, it’s a pretty good ding economically,” he said. “It’d be like trying to farm and losing most of your crop every year. You just can’t be sustainable.”

There are already some treatments that can kill off mites before they infect a colony, but Vance said you have to be fairly aggressive.

He treats his colonies in August and September and maybe a third time in the fall, if necessary. But these treatments don’t always work, especially on immature bees.

“Beekeeping is not an easy thing to do,” Vance said. “It is a challenge.”

He said if the success researchers have seen can translate to a marketable cure, it could be “a real game-changer.”

“You have to be able to package it in a way that I could buy it, put it in a colony and deliver it in an effective way in my own bees,” he said.

Anderson said honeybee colonies are “complex, dynamic machines” that can be affected by many stressors, like parasites, diseases, pesticides and even climate change.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, bees are big moneymakers for the U.S.

In 2019 alone, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says bees made 157 million pounds of honey, valued at over $339 million.

They’re also critical pollinators for crops and local plant life.

The FDA says bee pollination accounts for about $15 billion in added crop value.