What's the Progress on the Honeybee Mystery?

That's what popped into my head this morning, I haven't heard to much about it lately, we spent some time this year on the colony collapse disorder, possible causes from genetic-crops, pesticides, cellphone signals, global warming etc.. etc..

Still no definite answers yet but I did find a couple of recent articles on bees.

The first one is from New Zealand where they are breeding a varroa mite resistant strain of bees and while they have succeded in producing a resistant bee they will now have to figure out how to do this efficiently enough to make an impact.

NZ scientists breed varroa resistant bees

Scientists at HortResearch in New Zealand have successfully bred honey bees that fight back against varroa by rendering the mite's offspring sterile.
Since its arrival in NZ seven years ago, varroa has become the number one enemy of bees and beekeepers across much of the country.

This next information is kind of wild, a company is now producing a product called MegaBee (TM) which is like a protein smoothie which will help to make bees healthier, one researcher's theory on the demise of the bees is lack of nutrition so they developed this product to help the bees.

Will it work? I don't know this one seems a little farfetched what are they going to do open up some beesmoothie joints across the world so the bees can fly in and get a couple shots of this energy drink?

Hear the latest buzz? It's all about buffed-up bees

In a world obsessed with performance enhancement, underperforming bees can now get some zing in their sting.
One Tucson entomologist is trying to beef up the pollinating insects, which may become nutritionally deficient from a lack of variety in their diet.
Gordon Wardell, president of SAFE R&D LLC in Tucson, spent four years researching the right concoction to give nature's little workers some extra pep.

Performance Enhanced Bees?


Here is the press release by the company marketing this bee smootie :

prnewswire.com


ed:added press release link




[edit on 12/19/2007 by JacKatMtn]