Research reviewed: explaining, defining, using

摘要

"A clear demonstration of the potential for honey bee breeding to assist beekeepers in the fight against Varroa destructor." Explicit details about reproduction or the lack of it would generally not be considered appropriate in polite conversation.However, in the case of the reproduction of a pest that has the potential to destroy honey bee colonies, we can all agree that less is better. This is just the point of recent research that examined the relationship between selected honey bees and Varroadestructor reproduction. These researchers conducted experiments using queens from two stocks of honey bees that differed in their suitability as reproductive hosts for mites. One stock had been selected for the suppression of mite reproduction (SMRD).These honey bees were the result of years of selection and breeding to be poor hosts for Varroa reproduction. In the SMRD bees, female mites enter brood cells just before capping (as is normal), but they do not successfully rear a batch of youngsters. This trait is not expressed immediately when mites are introduced into a SMRD colony, as the mites are able to reproduce a first set of offspring, but subsequently they and their offspring exhibit very low success in reproduction. The other stock of honeybees used by the researchers was a typical commercial strain of unselected honey bees, that were susceptible to mites (SUS).