Honeybees that pollinate food crops are responsible for more than $13 billion in agriculture worldwide, every year. That’s a major problem considering the global honey bee population is rapidly declining.

Using data from field biologists and a new game-changing mathematical model, researchers from Western University have discovered that when a bee colony is threatened by an external force (like pesticides, pests, infections and parasites), forager bees leave the hive at a very young age.

This action sets off a chain reaction that inherently leads to colony collapse disorder, known in popular science as the death of the honey bees.

“Without bees you’d either have fruits that are prohibitively expensive at the supermarket or non-existent,” explains Matthew Betti, a graduate student from Western’s Faculty of Science that led the study. “Apples, berries and even broccoli will become rare. Without the bees, there will be no more apple pie.”

In normal conditions, forager bees leave the hive at 14-days old. Forager bees do the important work of gathering food to bring back to the hive and pollinate crops in the process. But in adverse conditions, an unsustainable cycle ensues: the hive pushes out younger and younger bees in a desperate attempt to get more food and save itself. Most of the young bees die and eventually the whole colony collapses.

“It’s like sending a teenager out into the world,” Betti says. “The human may survive but a nine-day old bee is not likely to make it.”

Betti’s mathematical model has resulted in a valuable warning sign that beekeepers can use now to make decisions in the field: If they see a lot of young bees flying out of the hive, they can act quickly and test for disease, isolate a particular hive, or cull healthy bees and transfer them to a new hive.

The findings by Betti and his collaborators from Western’s Department of Applied Mathematics, professor Lindi M. Wahl and professor emeritus Mair Zamir, were published in PLOS ONE.

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Jeff Renaud
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