By: Austin Carey
Dr. Hongmei Li-Byarlay is an Associate Professor of Entomology at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. Hongmei Li-Byarlay was born in Tianjin, China in 1976 and came to the United States in 2002 in order to obtain her doctoral degree in Entomology from Purdue University (Indiana). She then joined Gene Robinson’s honey bee research lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a postdoctoral fellow, then went to North Carolina State University for three years before joining Central State in 2017.
To follow, I talk about some of her current research in honey bee health, focused on mite biting behavior and the underlying mechanisms of mite resistance, the genetic basis of aggression behavior and the mechanisms by which different stressors impact the physiology and lifespan of honey bees. I also speak a little on the background of Central State University and the opportunities that being an 1890 Land-Grant university affords us as researchers.
Our Lab’s Current Research
American beekeepers know that the European honey bee was not well adapted to dealing with a threat like the Varroa mite and have suffered heavy losses since the 1980s. These losses came due to increased stress on the brood, as well as diseases brought into the hive via Varroa invaders.
Many solutions to this pervasive pest problem have been proposed over the years but most people fall back on the tried-and-true method of acaricide use to quell their ever expanding mite populations. At Central State University, our honey bee breeding program is attempting to produce honey bees that are resistant to Varroa mites via an increased level of grooming behavior. Our current breeding line is called Ohio High Biting #1 (OB1) stocks. We breed feral colonies from Southern and Central Ohio with high grooming and high mite biting behavior, as well as collaborating with Purdue University bee lab led by Dr. Brock Harpur and Extension specialist Krispn Given as multi-state efforts on breeding better bee stocks.
Grooming behavior is most often assessed by carefully examining mite samples underneath a microscope determining what percentage of the mites collected in that sample have been chewed by bees in that particular colony. These samples are collected by placing a sheet of metal or plastic underneath the colony you want to sample. The colony should have a screen bottom board, so that any mites that may fall from above fall through the screen and on to our collection sheet. After a few days the sheet should be pulled out and mites carefully removed and placed into a container to be examined later.
The process of collecting biting data is essential to our work as it allows us to determine which colonies we should use in our breeding program. Once those colonies are found and selected, we either use them for grafting new queens or use its drones to inseminate other queens in the hopes of producing offspring with even better grooming potential. Our goal is to breed a mite biting honey bee stock capable of coping with the Varroa mite threat and to potentially apply these breeding techniques to other useful traits exhibited by honey bees. Our published paper in 2021 revealed that changes to the bee mandible may explain why these worker bees perform high grooming behavior and mite biting behavior (Smith J, Cleare X, Given K, Li-Byarlay H, 2021. Morphological changes in the mandibles accompany the defensive behavior of Indiana mite biting honey bees against Varroa destructor, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution doi: 10.3389/fevo.2021.638308). In this publication, we compared the three dimensional morphological structures of breeding stocks and discovered the shape of the high biting workers from breeding colonies is different from commercial colonies.
1890 Land-Grant Institutions
Before we talk about how Central State being an 1890 Land-Grant institution has influenced us and our research, it is important to understand what that means. The 1890 Land-Grant Institutions are national programs supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to deliver agricultural research, extension services and education to the public.
As of writing, there are nineteen historically black universities across the United States established under the Second Morrill Act of 1890 and are called the 1890 Land-Grant Universities (Allen and Rajotte, 1990). A lot of these institutions have active research, extension and educational programs in the topic of Entomology, which is an essential component of agricultural science, research and technological development. Central State University has sought land-grant status since 1890 when the federal government designated the first set of Historically Black College and University (HBCU) as land-grant colleges. On January 29, 2014, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and U.S. Representative Marcia Fudge (OH-11), senior members of the Senate and House Agriculture Committees and members of the Farm Bill Conference Committee, announced that Central State University was added to a distinguished list of HBCUs focused on expanding opportunities for agricultural research and education, commonly referred to as “1890 Universities.” The new status enables the university to expand its research and extension capacity in the areas of science, technology, engineering, agriculture and math (STEAM) and enlarge our outreach and support of sustainable agriculture.
How Does This Impact Us?
The 1890 Land-Grant Research fund enabled our CSU Bee Research Lab to use cutting edge technologies and tools in modern genetics and genomics to do important research on honey bee genetics and breeding. Only when we know the gene markers and genetic components of mite resistant traits such as grooming, will we be able to breed and select faster and better honey bee stocks for American beekeepers and sustainable agriculture. In addition, working closely with students at CSU can enable us to train the next generation of researchers from underrepresented minority populations to become pillars of the agricultural workforce.
Working with pollinators allows us to help beekeepers and contribute to agriculture as a whole. Doing research is a slow process that requires a lot of teamwork but with both focus and patience it can be incredibly rewarding.
References
Allen, W and Rajotte, E (1990) The changing role of extension entomology in the IPM era. Annual Review of Entomology 35: 379-397.
Smith J, Cleare X, Given K, Li-Byarlay H, 2021. Morphological changes in the mandibles accompany the defensive behavior of Indiana mite biting honey bees against Varroa destructor, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution doi: 10.3389/fevo.2021.638308.