This 14-year old just won $3,500 towards her choice of STEM summer camp for her project, in which she studies the material honeybees use to build nests in order to better inform beekeepers of where to place hives, as well as her critical thinking, communication, creativity and collaboration skills.

Amara, a 14-year-old from Council Bluffs, Iowa (Lewis Central Middle School) on October 23 won first in in the science category the Broadcom MASTERS, the nation’s premier STEM competition for middle school students, founded and produced by the Society for Science & the Public. Amara has won $3,500 towards her choice of STEM summer camp for her overall mastery of science and engineering as well as her project.

Amara is focused on studying the habitats from which bees collect propolis, a material used to fill the empty space in a beehive. Her research can assist beekeepers in selecting the location of their bee yards enabling honey bees to choose better, healthier propolis and stymie the spread of pathogens.

By the third group, I had my timing and applause lines down. To be fair, elementary school students are easy to entertain.

I usually start with a poster of bees, native bees, and ask them which one is a honey bee. Some little fingers point to a bumble bee and some to a carpenter bee and others to an orchard mason bee. It’s a trick question, of course, and the kids are flabbergasted that I might play a trick on them.

And so, I tell them honey bees are special – and ask them why pilgrims brought honey bees with them to America. This is no trick question: for honey and beeswax. One skeptic doesn’t believe me and wants to know how pilgrims brought bees on the boat without getting stung. That is a good question. Indeed German Black Bees plus wave action seem like an iffy combination, so I just tell him waves put bees asleep. Then, like any defensive adult worried about being outsmarted by a 3rd grader, I change the subject and go on the offensive. I begin a line of questioning about honey: What is honey? What is nectar? I tell them honey is like bees’ version of Mountain Dew; it gives bees lots of energy. I pass around a frame of honey.

I proceed to pollen. Pollen is like cheeseburgers and pizza. It provides proteins for muscles for wings and bee legs. I pass around a frame of multicolored pollen, and one kid asks which color pollen taste like pizza and which one tastes like cheeseburgers. I dodge again and move on to demographics. 

Bee demographics provide easy material. I start with the number of bees in a hive. Some children guess 100 or 1000. They are, literally, taken aback that 30,000 bees inhabit a hive. Some retreat, concerned that I might have 30,000 bees hiding in the empty display hive beside me. I then target the strained gender relations in elementary school. I ask them how many bees in the hive are girls. Most say “one,” the queen. I tell them the queen is female, but all workers bees are female too. To shock and awe, I tell them nearly all bees in the hive are female, and the few boys don’t do any work. All the girls in the class take umbrage and say that’s not fair. The boys start laughing. Then I tell them the female bees get revenge because they kick the boy bees out of the hive into the cold before winter to die. This nearly triggers a riot.

But what happens next is strange. A young boy, hitherto silent and sitting cross-legged on the floor in the back, shouts out, “And boy bees are called drones!” Even his classmates, who were hurling boy versus girl insults, quiet down. “Yes, boy bees are called drones,” I affirm, indeed impressed that a third grader knows this. I notice the teacher and assistant look at one another, but I think little more of the comment and continue with my elementary school greatest hits. I adorn two eager volunteers in bee suits, let them pretend to smoke and work a hive. Then I wrap things up and prepare to rewind for another group.

While the class lines up to march to another station, the teacher approaches and whispers that the boy who mentioned the drones rarely talks, that he has autism. She’s stunned he knew about drones. Then she heads off to escort her tribe, as another group of eager children approach for round four. By the end of the school day, after many more rounds, my voice is nearly gone and my brain is drained. And as I pack up, I think about the boy who knew about drones – and I feel invigorated.

Jay Evans

By: Jay Evans

Convergent Ways To Expose And Fight Mites

I highlighted three months ago the challenges needed to select for and maintain specific desired traits in honey bees while not losing ground on others, e.g., work on Varroa-sensitive hygiene (VSH) and other resistance traits (https://www.beeculture.com/found-in-translation-15/). The last couple months have seen at least four advances in identifying and selecting these desirable traits. One study compiled insights from four of the best known Varroa-resistant populations, looking for common traits that arise and are maintained when bees are either actively bred for low mite loads or develop mite resistance naturally.  These include sustainable mite populations in Norway, Sweden (Gotland) and France. In all cases, a behavioral component appears to help these lineages keep mite levels in check. This study, by Melissa Oddie and colleagues, takes one aspect of hygienic behavior and isolates it from similar defenses (“Rapid parallel evolution overcomes global honey bee parasite”, Scientific Reports, 2018, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-26001-7). The trait they chose was the frequency of cell uncapping and recapping, without removing brood. Interestingly, simply uncapping the cells and letting bees recap them led to a substantial increase in non-reproductive mites. While they used a creative method to do this in quantity (soaking a piece of linen with wax, letting it adhere to caps and then ripping the lids off), this is not a method beekeepers will do much. Still, it gives insights into the benefits of uncapping, per se. As another creative tool, they recognized that cells that had been uncapped at some point during development showed a characteristic dimple that could be seen and documented at the very end of development. This neat trait allowed them to simply screen mature pupae for mite loads and then infer whether they had been uncapped at some point (saving the eyes of countless students who would otherwise have to stare at an observation hive with capped brood). As expected, the four resistant stocks showed significantly higher recapping rates during development, 3-4-fold more often than the susceptible stocks. Recapping was focused on mite-infested brood, but even non-infested brood was recapped at a higher rate in resistant stock, suggesting a general tendency to look under the hood, or perhaps the presence of other diseases that triggered hygienic behavior.  Importantly, the uncapped brood used in these experiments came from a homogeneous set of donor colonies. In other words, it was not that the diseased brood in hygienic colonies were yelling (smelling) louder, but that the workers uncapping and then recapping their cells were somehow more attuned and active. Perhaps the recapping ‘dimple’ can be used by bee breeders as another strategy to breed resistant stock.

Hasan Al Toufailia and colleagues in England recently confirmed experimentally that a key for honey bee hygienics is the ability to recognize what is going on with capped brood (“Both hygienic and non-hygienic honey bee, Apis mellifera, colonies remove dead and diseased larvae from open brood cells”, http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0201). In their study, all open brood that was freeze-killed was removed by worker bees within a day, in all lineages of bees studied. This was true across a set of 20 colonies showing a wide spectrum of hygienic tendencies (53%-100% removal of freeze-killed and sealed brood). Similarly, when the youngest larvae were exposed to Ascosphaera apis, the causative agent for chalkbrood disease, all exposed larvae were removed pre-capping. In contrast, when larvae were exposed to A. apis closer to capping only around 30% (‘medium-aged’ larvae) and 15% (larger larvae inoculated a day before capping) were uncapped and removed by workers. Some of these differences in brood removal might reflect resilience of older larvae toward chalkbrood, but the authors argue that colony-level differences in hygienics likely led some colonies to miss or ignore capped disease larvae. So, the hunt needs to be on what makes nurse bees more attuned to their stressed younger sisters while those sisters are covered by a layer of wax.

Seo Hyun Kim and colleagues made headway on determining the cues hygienic worker bees recognize in diseased capped brood.  In their 2018 study (“Honey bees performing varroa sensitive hygiene remove the most mite-compromised bees from highly infested patches of brood”, Apidologie, 10.1007/s13592-017-0559-6), bees were more likely to uncap brood to check things out when mite foundresses were not only reproductive but actively so.  This has been demonstrated as a key trait of VSH in the past (see work by Marla Spivak and colleagues in the Journal of Neurobiology, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1002/neu.10219), but the current study pushes the science forward by showing exactly when and perhaps how mite reproduction triggers uncapping. Cells with mite offspring, even tiny protonymphs, were uncapped twice as often as cells with just a mite foundress or a foundress with eggs. Once a cell was uncapped, it was more likely that neighboring cells would be uncapped even when accounting for their own mite levels, so bees seemed to be accurately predicting that mites cluster somewhat in small regions of the comb.

Finally, Alison McAfee and colleagues in Vancouver quantified the abilities of two volatile chemicals, β-ocimene and oleic acid, to trigger hygienic behavior by worker bees. While it is not perceived by our noses, oleic acid is a widely used indicator of death throughout the arthropods (insects, crustaceans, mites and the like), meaning that members of these groups have been using this cue to avoid their own demise for 400+ million years (“The ancient chemistry of avoiding risks of predation and disease” Evolutionary Biology, 2009, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-009-9069-4). Other than confirming once again that death stinks, how can these results be used to advance bee breeding? One way is to recognize exactly how bees perceive these two molecules and then determine whether this mechanism can be enhanced via breeding. McAfee and colleagues are well on the way to doing just that, by exploiting a remarkable set of specific proteins that help bees and all of us smell our environment. These aptly named odorant binding proteins (OBPs) are diverse in honey bees and are involved in many aspects of their communication, often being triggered by single molecules that fit them just right.  Two OBPs, OBP16 and OBP18, seem to react to β-ocimene and oleic acid and hence are targets for breeding more perceptive bees.  The discovery that decades of excellent work on hygienic behavior in honey bees can be refined to specific cues is truly exciting and these insights should aid breeding efforts against some of the worst honey bee foes.

NEXTEST-GENERATION SCIENTISTS

I am a bit of a cynic for fairs and award shows (and don’t get me started on beauty contests), but I was deeply moved by the energy and insights provided by high school students from 81 countries at this month’s Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (https://student.societyforscience.org/intel-isef). When my daughter Simone was invited to compete I wasn’t sure it would merit spending a week in Pittsburgh (and yes I did joke that the second-place Maryland girl received TWO weeks in Pittsburgh), but fortunately Simone pushed, and off we went to the ‘Olympics’ of youth science.

The Fair included about 20 presentations related to pollination, and I tried to visit all of them. One favorite was presented by Elizabeth Wamsley from Timber Ridge Scholars Academy in Missouri. Elizabeth used RNA interference to target Varroa mites, a hot topic both in industry and at research labs, including ours. She was able to see an effect of RNA knockdowns after soaking mites in solutions containing RNA segments targeting Varroa mitochondrial proteins, broadening the list of potential mite targets. Elizabeth won scholarship offers and cash awards for her efforts.

Natalia Jacobson from Empire High School in Arizona also focused on a major honey bee health threat, in her case Nosema disease. Natalia provided new insights into the impacts of protein nutrition on Nosema. Specifically, by supplementing diseased bees with the amino acid cysteine, she measured increased immunity and survival along with the enlarged hypopharyngeal glands typical of healthy bees. As with other emerging research, “your results may vary”, so please hold off on introducing cysteine into your colonies until more work is done. Still, Natalia’s project and analysis were careful and the results are truly exciting.

On the medical side, William Deering from IDEA Homeschool in Alaska tested whether plant compounds added to a ‘synthetic honey’ comprised of sucrose syrup could lead to new antibiotics. After informing him of the unfortunate connotations of the term ‘synthetic honey’, I leaned in to see which compounds he favored and to compare them to similar ongoing efforts aimed at bee health. William found that infusions based on extracts from Alaskan flowers led to lower bacterial growth in 16 out of 17 cases, indicating a wide potential for plant extracts as a new source of antibiotics.  He is widening his scope to plant extracts from other parts of North America and beyond, and has the energy to really ramp up this search.

William Deering

Also in the ‘what can bees do for you?’ section, Australian student Ella Cuthbert (Lyneham High School) had a brilliant project looking at medical uses for honey bee silk. To avoid some extremely tedious collections, she inserted the major silk proteins into a laboratory production system, allowing her to make these proteins in a test tube. In the end, two silk proteins were shown to reduce the growth of bacteria. Combined with the strength characteristics of silk, this finding might lead to new wound dressings. Nobody defines youthful optimism better than Ella, who started her abstract with “The dream of living forever, only accomplishable by replacing broken parts of the human body, is closer than it has ever been before.” Take THAT, curmudgeons.

Ella Cuthbert

Additional international entries came from Thailand (A New Method to Increase Propolis Production by Activating Nest Repair Behavior in Stingless Bees), South Africa (Determining the Availability of Pollen Sources for Honeybees on Deciduous Fruit Farms in Summer), and Puerto Rico (Comparative Study Between Bellis sylvestris, Artemisia dracunculus and Lantana trifolia in the Ability to Attract Apis mellifera). These entries, also, were well done and well presented.

Team Thailand

In the end, if I had to pick a ‘Best in Show’ it would go to Brooklyn Pardall from Central Lee High School in Iowa. Brooklyn showed a stunning increase in soybean yields when honey bees were part of the picture.  Honey bees are not needed for soybean production, since production soy plants are self-pollinating, nor are bees really thought to crave the rewards provided by soybean flowers. Nevertheless, having hive boxes amidst rows of soybeans seems to have increased yields by over 20%. This is a huge margin in a crop already pushed to production capacity. What gives? It could be that bee visits tap into a dormant plant reproductive cue, even when the pollen they deliver is no longer critical.  In a similar vein, asexual coffee plants were shown by Smithsonian scientist David Roubik to respond favorably to honey bee visits, increasing bean yields substantially (https://www.nature.com/articles/417708a).  Brooklyn is planning follow-up experiments this year.  Having met her and her team, and knowing that she carried out all of her experiments on her own family’s 6,000 acre soybean farm, I would not bet against her.  If it turns out that honey bees significantly improve soybean crops, this could be a three-way win; better crop production, a new revenue source for beekeepers, and a stronger incentive for soybean farmers to maintain a healthy environment for visiting pollinators.

Brooklyn Pardall

Since I don’t have a gig at a plant magazine, I can’t give much space to Simone Evans’ awesome orchid project nor her success at these Olympics, but she already knows who’s the favorite – and despite my snarky comment at the start, Pittsburgh was really fun. It reminded me of the 1970s and 80s Seattle of my youth, before that city became so sparkly. If you are able, I would strongly recommend attending the public days at INTEL/ISEF in the future to see some great ideas and outputs (Phoenix in 2019, Anaheim in 2020). You can also peruse projects from this year and many former years at https://abstracts.societyforscience.org/. Many past competitors continue to have a great impact on the field. Regardless, please support your local science students, relatives or not, as they set out on ways to improve the world.

Jay Evans is the Research Leader for the USDA Honey Bee Lab in Beltsville, MD.

AUSTIN, Texas (November 7, 2017) – Me & the Bees Lemonade founder, philanthropist and kidpreneur, Mikaila Ulmer, has just been named to Time Magazine’s 30 Most Influential Teens of 2017 list.

Mikaila Ulmer was just four years old, when she was stung by two bees in the same week, creating a fascination that inspired her to start Me & The Bees Lemonade. Upon discovering the important role bees play in our ecosystem, Mikaila was determined to help them. Using her Great Granny’s flaxseed honey lemonade recipe, Mikaila launched a business out of her Austin, Texas home. Fast forward 8 years later, Mikaila’s award winning Me & The Bees Lemonade is buzzing off the shelves in more than 300 Whole Foods Market stores, Wegmans and other grocers across the United States. Committed to philanthropy, Mikaila helps save honey bees by donating 10 percent of profits toward the cause.

On the heels of her 13th birthday, Mikaila is one of only two 13 year olds to be featured on this years’ Time Magazine’s Most Influential Teens list, the other being Netflix Stranger Things star, Millie Bobby Brown. Time Magazine selects individuals for their annual Influential Teens list based on accolades across numerous fields, global impact through social media and overall ability to drive news. In the past, Time Magazine’s Most Influential Teen lists have recognized everyone from singer Lorde to Olympic champion Simone Biles to political activist Joshua Wong.

“I am beyond honored to be recognized with such an amazing list of teens who are showing the world the potential of today’s youth,” says Mikaila Ulmer, kidpreneur, philanthropist and founder Me & the Bees Lemonade. “Time Magazine’s Most Influential Teens list demonstrates the potential power us teens can have, and that age does not have to be a barrier.”

Landing a deal with Daymond John on the show Shark Tank was just the beginning of Me & the Bees’ many business successes. Now just 13 years old, Mikaila’s story has caught the attention of Good Morning America, NBC News, The Real, Forbes and TIME among others, along with the National Retail Federation Foundation (NRF) who named Mikaila one of the Top 25 People Shaping Retail’s Future this past January. Mikaila’s movement has also inspired 10 NFL players including Arian Foster (Former Running Back for the Houston Texans) and Glover Quin (Safety for the Detroit Lions), to sign up as investors, increasing production capacity which has enabled for a greater impact on saving the bees.

In 2015, Me & the Bees Lemonade was the recipient of a low-interest loan from Whole Foods Market, as part of the grocer’s Local Producer Loan Program. With the loan, they created two new flavors of lemonade and continued to supply more stores, most recently launching in Whole Foods Market’s Northeast Region.

“We’re so excited that Mikaila is receiving this recognition as a young and talented influencer,” said Jillian Shimskey, grocery category manager for Whole Foods Market. “Mikaila is innovative, charitable and incredibly driven. We’ve loved seeing her growth both within Whole Foods Market through expansion of Me & the Bees Lemonade, and through her ongoing philanthropic and community endeavors. We’re very proud partners!”

Mikaila recently launched Healthy Hive, a non-profit organization focused on bee Awareness, Education, and Preservation, so team Me & the Bees can make a greater impact on saving the bees. Mikaila has been invited to speak on social entrepreneurship at prestigious gatherings including the White House United State of Women Summit, where she introduced President Barack Obama, the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network Summit in South Africa and Microsoft We Day, alongside Satya Nadella.

Mikaila is just getting started. This winter, Mikaila will begin writing her first children’s book which will teach kids how to start and grow their own businesses, and Mikaila is expanding her company to benefit the awareness of and protection her beloved honey bees.

Me and the Bees utilizes the brand management and distribution services of Ramsey, NJ based Cascadia Managing Brands.

About Mikaila and Me & the Bees Lemonade

Me & the Bees Lemonade is a bottled all natural lemonade product with an interesting back story. While preparing for a children’s business competition at the age of 4, Mikaila found her Great Granny Helen’s flaxseed lemonade recipe in a 1940’s family cookbook.  She also was stung by a bee twice in the same week, which Mikaila admits was a very uncomfortable experience. Encouraged by her parents to overcome her fear of bees, Mikaila began to study bees and their role in the ecosystem. She learned that bees pollinate about a third of the foods that humans consume and that the bee population is decreasing.

With the recent launch of Healthy Hive, a non-profit organization focused on bee Awareness, Education, and Preservation, team Me & the Bees can make a greater impact on saving the bees.

Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue, joined by Sen. Pat Roberts (left) & Tom Marshall, Loudoun County School Board, signs a proclamation.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue today announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will provide greater flexibility in nutrition requirements for school meal programs in order to make food choices both healthful and appealing to students.  Perdue made the announcement during a visit to Catoctin Elementary School in Leesburg, Virginia to mark School Nutrition Employee Week.  Perdue signed a proclamation which begins the process of restoring local control of guidelines on whole grains, sodium, and milk.  Perdue was joined by Sen. Pat Roberts (KS), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, and Patricia Montague, CEO of the School Nutrition Association.

“This announcement is the result of years of feedback from students, schools, and food service experts about the challenges they are facing in meeting the final regulations for school meals,” Perdue said.  “If kids aren’t eating the food, and it’s ending up in the trash, they aren’t getting any nutrition – thus undermining the intent of the program.”

“I commend Secretary Perdue for taking this important step,” said Montague. “We have been wanting flexibility so that schools can serve meals that are both nutritious and palatable. We don’t want kids wasting their meals by throwing them away. Some of our schools are actually using that food waste as compost. That shouldn’t be happening.”

Schools have been facing increasing fiscal burdens as they attempt to adhere to existing, stringent nutrition requirements.  According to USDA figures, school food requirements cost school districts and states an additional $1.22 billion in Fiscal Year 2015.  At the same time costs are going up, most states are reporting that they’ve seen a decrease in student participation in school lunches, as nation-wide about one million students choose not to have a school lunch each day.  This impacts schools in two ways: The decline in school lunch participation means reduced revenue to schools while they simultaneously are encountering increased costs.

“I was talking to some folks in Washington about this, and they said that the current program is working.  ‘How do you know?’ I asked.  They said it’s because 99 percent of schools are at least partially compliant.  Well, only in Washington can that be considered proof that the system is working as it was intended,” Perdue said.  “A perfect example is in the south, where the schools want to serve grits.  But the whole grain variety has little black flakes in it, and the kids won’t eat it.  The school is compliant with the whole grain requirements, but no one is eating the grits.  That doesn’t make any sense.”

The specific flexibilities are:

• Whole grains:
  • Schools are experiencing challenges in finding the full range of products they need and that their students enjoy in whole grain-rich form. They need continued flexibility in meeting the whole grain requirements for school meals.
  • USDA will allow states to grant exemptions to schools experiencing hardship in serving 100 percent of grain products as whole-grain rich for School Year 2017-2018.  USDA will take all necessary regulatory actions to implement a long-term solution.
• Sodium:
  • For School Years 2017-2018 through 2020, schools will not be required to meet Sodium Target 2. Instead, schools that meet Sodium Target 1 will be considered compliant.
  • The time frame will provide schools and the school nutrition industry with the certainty and predictability they need to make appropriate plans for creating foods with the appropriate amount of sodium.  During this period, USDA will take all necessary regulatory actions to implement a long-term solution.
  • USDA will dedicate significant resources to providing technical assistance to schools as they continue to develop menus that are low in sodium and appealing to students.
• Milk:
  • Milk is a key component of school meals, meaning schools must have more options for students who select milk as part of their lunch or breakfast.
  • Perdue will direct USDA to begin the regulatory process for schools to serve 1 percent flavored milk through the school meals programs.  USDA will seek to publish an interim rule as soon as possible to effect the change in milk policy.

“I’ve got 14 grandchildren, and there is no way that I would propose something if I didn’t think it was good, healthful, and the right thing to do,” Perdue said.  “And here’s the thing about local control: it means that this new flexibility will give schools and states the option of doing what we’re laying out here today.  These are not mandates on schools.”

Perdue lauded the efforts of the nation’s food service staff in serving healthful, appealing meals and underscored USDA’s commitment to help them overcome any remaining challenges they face in meeting the nutrition standards.

“The hard work and dedication of the people who prepare nutritious meals for our children should serve as an example to all, and we will continue to support them,” Perdue said.  “We also have a responsibility to our shareholders and our customers – the American taxpayers – to provide our school children with healthful and nutritious meals in the most efficient and cost effective way possible.”

For more information, please view a copy of Secretary Perdue’s proclamation (PDF, 123 KB).

USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service administers 15 nutrition assistance programs that include the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and the Summer Food Service Program.