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18:00 – 20:15 CET; 12pm to 2:15pm EST; 9am to 11:15am PST
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Dr. Silvio Erler : Social immunity – from hygienic behaviour to self-medication
Honey bees use two major routes to defend themselves and their colonies against parasites and pathogens that might cause colony losses. On the one hand, the cellular and humoral innate immune system can be activated for the individual honey bee. On colony level, the so-called superorganism, collective behavioural immunity, also known as social immunity, is the major mechanism. Social immunity includes several traits like hygienic behaviour, grooming and foraging for antibiotic plant products. In particular, self-medication and social-medication using nectar and pollen are relatively new fields of research in the last decade. Several parasites and pathogens, like Nosema sp., trypanosomes, bacteria and viruses have been investigated to be controlled by self-medication. However, their effectivity on colony level and the application for beekeeping needs further investigation.
Dr. Silvio Erler studied biology at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg and obtained his PhD in 2012. After a postdoc period at the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca, he is currently researcher and deputy director of the Institute for Bee Protection at the Julius Kühn-Institute (Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants). He has worked on different issues of host-parasite interaction, insect immunity, biology of bee diseases, bee ecology and evolution, bee product science and other aspects of social insect biology.
He was and is partner or coordinator in national and international research projects. He has published more than 50 research papers on these subjects in both, scientific and beekeeping journals, and is member of the editoral board of Insects, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution and Frontiers in Insect Science.
Affiliation : Institute for Bee Protection, Julius Kühn-Institute (JKI) – Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants, Braunschweig, Germany ( link )
Publication ( link )
!! The conference will not be recorded !
Dr. Jay Evans : Holistic honey bee health
The natural defenses of honey bees will be discussed, focusing on
1) the key factors tied to honey bee colony losses,
2) known parasites and pathogens,
3) interactive effects, and
4) possible solutions.
By understanding social and individual defenses and the impacts of the environment on the choices available to bees, as demonstrated by Dr. Erler, it is possible to envision management schemes that improve pollinator health. This talk will focus on the search for causes behind honey bee colony losses, interactions between factors, and ongoing research to reduce the impacts of bee challenges. Briefly, honey bees suffer from the combined impacts of chemicals and disease stress. Disease factors act together to cause colony losses, as shown especially with the interactions between parasitic mites and disease risk. In this case, tackling either component could lead to better outcomes. There has been substantial work aimed at breeding and management controls for mite numbers, with good success. Thanks to a combination of ecological insights and better screening routines, there is now hope for new ways to reduce the threat of viruses and other microbes that cause bee mortality and colony declines.
Jay Evans is Lead Scientist for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Bee Research Laboratory (BRL) in Beltsville, Maryland. The BRL is focused on the development of management strategies to help honey bees thrive in the face of disease, chemical stress, and inadequate forage. Jay’s own research uses genetic techniques and controlled experiments find new ways to reduce the impacts of parasites and pathogens. Current projects involve honey bee immunity, interactions with pesticides and other stress factors, and the development of novel, safe, controls for mites and viruses. Jay received his Bachelor of Arts (AB) in Biology from Princeton University in 1988 and his PhD in Biology from the University of Utah in 1995.
Affiliation : United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Bee Research Laboratory (BRL)
Publication ( link )
!! The conference will not be recorded !!
To attend this conference, please buy a ticket. ( link )
You decide how much you would like to pay for a ticket for the online conference. The price of a ticket to help cover the costs of the online conference is 39 Swiss Francs (CHF 39). We encourage you to make a larger financial contribution, if you can, to support financing the future events and the conservation and safeguarding of wild-living honey bees.
You will receive a link on Zoom in good time before the conference.