Q&A on the News

Q: Several years ago the University of Georgia was given a federal grant to study the disappearance of the honey bees. What was the result of that study?

— Steven Cherning, Decatur

A: UGA has been focused on narrowing and better understanding the causes of bee decline, Keith S. Delaplane, a professor in UGA's Department of Entomology, told Q&A on the News in an email. "Basically, bee decline is a huge issue and not easily reducible to one or a few causes," he wrote. "It is instead a web of causation, and the answer will involve not only good bee husbandry but revisions to our land-use and pest-control habits." Delaplane described highlights of the $4.1 million Managed Pollinator CAP project, which UGA will receive for its fourth and final year. His team has shown that the varroa mite is a "vector" of Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV), a cause of bee colony deaths; is studying the use of RNA-silencing technology to "shut off" the "virulence factors," associated with IAPV; coordinated a national study with seven research sites to understand factors affecting colony survival in the field -- parasite and disease levels, environmental toxins, weather, land use patterns and their interactions; shown a high degree (73-93 percent) of cross-infection of viruses between honey bees and local native bumble bees; shown the possibility for dangerous chemical interactions (to bees) between agricultural fungicides and two of the most commonly used miticides beekeepers use to control the varroa mite; and provided non-chemical answers to the varroa mite, by working on genetically improving the honey bee through disease resistance.