In An Effort To Save Honey Bees, WSU Researchers Turn To Refrigerators

Researchers at Washington State University plan to advance their study of refrigeration to fight varroa mites that harm honey bees, thanks to two new grants.  Brandon Hopkins, assistant research professor at WSU’s Department of Entomology, said the local bee keeper and tree fruit industry pushed to have this research changed from an observational study to one that is more in depth.

“With a grant from them for $100,000 to get some research containers, so we could do some real controlled experiments on a scale that was reliable for the commercial industry versus what we’ve been doing is really observational studies.”

Hopkins said they also received $100,000 from the Almond Board of California, which will help purchase three 20’ cargo containers.  He said those containers will be retrofitted with equipment that will allow researcher to better control conditions.  Hopkins added the hope is that these refrigerated containers can be used to find best management practices.

“So that we can stabilize the U.S. commercial population of honey bee colonies, so that growers in both almonds and tree fruit here in Washington can kind of stop worrying about that.  I mean, those growers have enough things to worry about.”

In addition to the $200,000 received from the WSTFRC and the Almond Board, WSU received a $500,000 grant from USDA, which will be used to get the containers up and running by August.

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