History and News
Probiotics in Honey bees to fight bacterial and fungal diseases
Background
Honey bee pollination, so vital for the viability of Australian agriculture and horticulture, is under threat from various parasites, pesticides and diseases and as a result, bee colonies have been declining all around the world. New chemical-free and economical methods to control diseases are therefore urgently needed.
Probiotic treatments have recently been developed to increase the resistance of the European honey bee to specific viral and bacterial diseases. Yet, several diseases infect hives and it is challenging to anticipate which disease is responsible for poor hive performance. It is therefore vital to develop methods that are efficient at improving honey bee resistance towards a wide spectrum of diseases.
Objectives of this project
The overall objective of the project is the development and implementation of innovative probiotics as low-cost and chemical-free treatments to honey bee diseases.
The project has 3 specific objectives:
i. To culture and store probiotic strains and diseases of honey bees in laboratory conditions;
ii. To test for the effects of probiotics against a range of infections in laboratory conditions and,
iii. To test for the effects of probiotics on flower visitation by honey bees in the field.
This project will be hosted by the Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University that will provide access to high-quality research facilities and advanced technologies. The researchers will also have access to honey bee hives to directly test their products.
Team News
We have a chalkbrood infection!
It's ok, we did it on purpose!
Last week the Probiotics Team started an infection assay to make sure we could inoculate the reared larvae with controlled amounts of the common honeybee diseases. One of them is Chalkbrood, a fungal pathogen that invades the guts of larvae and mummifies them from the inside out. It is next to impossible to fully get rid of chalkbrood from your honeybee hive because the spores can live for years preserved in the hive environments.
Here we have two larvae, close to pupation, covered in fungal growth.
We're aiming to create a probiotic mix that will help the larvae fight this fungus within the gut so the individual bee doesn't succumb to this disease.
Larval grafting for infection assays
The Probiotics Team started a pilot study in March 2024 to understand how we might inoculate bee larvae with pathogens that don't kill them off straight away - this is a complex method where we graft tiny bee larvae, just one day old after hatching from eggs, and place them into sterile containers in which to raise them to adulthood. We feed them a mix of royal jelly, yeast, fructose and glucose each day to they grow to pupation, and along the way gave them a micro-dose of one of three common brood diseases to understand how to infect them for future probiotic treatment experiments.
Campus honeybees
Did you know we have an apiary of hives at Macquarie University?
Having colonies on campus means we can have access to bees for all sorts of research, including understanding pollination behaviour, how temperature effects the colony and other ecological questions. In this photo, several adult bees are taking a drink of their stores, but we can also see some uncapped cells in the bottom left corner with tiny eggs inside, next to some capped cells that contain pupae that are developing into adults! The top of the photo shows capped cells full of honey, and in the middle is some cells with collected yellow pollen.
Watching bees go about their business and organise their living spaces is such a privilege to witness!
NSW Apiarists Association Conference, May 2023
The Probiotics Team headed to the NSWAA conference in May 2023, and boy, did we learn a lot about Varroa mites! It was wonderful to meet so many apiarists, industry, government and researchers working with bees in Australia, as well as the plenary speaker, Prof. Samuel Ramsey from the USA, who gave two great talks on both Varroa and Tropilaelaps mites.
Sydney Bee Day, July 2023
The Probiotics Team attended the annual Sydney Bee Day which was hosted by the University of Sydney this year. This meeting allows researchers working on bees in NSW to come together and introduce themselves and their work - USyd put on a fantastic day and fed us all very well. Fleur, Theo, Darsh and Vanessa each presented a brief insight into what we've been up to lately.
Darsh presents the Probiotic project at Sydney Bee Day 2023, along with his previous work on pathogen transmission at the N.T. DPI
Theo presents his recent honey bee research projects, including way of tracking bees using RFIDs
Vanessa presents her work on bee bacteria - both gut microbiota and environmental
Casey presents some of her PhD work on the effects of pesticides and antibiotics on bee gut microbiome
The DPI EMAI Diagnostics team visit the Eco-Immunology Lab at Macquarie Uni, August 2023
We invited the diagnostic team from the DPI EMAI Biosecurity branch to come and visit the lab facilities and have a chat over morning tea this month. It was a great opportunity to network with Mark Westman, Belinda O'Rourke and Khushbu Ghandi, who work with honey and bee pathogens directly from Australian Apiarists. We hope that connections such as these lead to exciting future collaborations.
Theo explains his current research on honey bees
We really enjoyed having the Diagnostic Team visit our facilities, including the PC2 lab