According to the ecologist Lori Lach, from the Center for Tropical Biodiversity and Climate Change of the aforementioned institution, which has coordinated this initiative, the information provided by the mills will allow a better understanding of the diseases that affect these insects, fundamental in pollination, and that are disappearing from various parts of the globe.
“We chipped 960 bees. To do this, we had to assign each one a color code, ‘label’ them by hand one by one and adhere the transmitter to them with a special glue. We also had to take care of them and feed them separately. And all in the shortest possible time. In total it took us about eight hours, ”says Lach. Thanks to this technology, experts have been able to monitor each animal independently.
“Never before has it been possible to study what a single bee does in such detail. The idea was to know what happens to them when they get sick ”, explains Lach. To do this, the scientists inoculated half the insects with a small dose of spores of Nosema apis , an intestinal parasite that usually affects adult honey bees and is not as harmful as other pathogens that attack these animals. According to Lach and his collaborators in the Journal of Invertebrate Pathology, they found out that sick bees were about four times less likely to carry pollen; in fact, when they did, they carried less .
In addition, they started work later, stopped earlier, and their life expectancy was shorter. “Sick and healthy bees are indistinguishable in appearance,” says Lach. “It is crucial to know how parasites affect their behavior, since the survival of these insects is essential for our own species. A quarter of global food production depends on its ability to pollinate fields, ”he emphasizes.
