A team of researchers, including two from Lethbridge, has gotten grants worth $400,000 to study honey bee viruses.
Dr. Trushar Patel is a Canada Research Chair and associate professor of Chemistry and Biology at the University of Lethbridge. Dr. Shelley Hoover is an associate professor in Biological Sciences at the post-secondary, as well as a honey bee expert.
The two local researchers are working with Drs. Wade Abbott, a scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and Lara Mahal, the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Glycomics at the University of Alberta. They are trying to better understand how honey bee-infecting viruses are transmitted and how they interact with the bees they infect.
“Understanding the mechanisms of honey bee viruses is crucial for developing effective strategies to protect these vital pollinators,” says Dr. Dena McMartin, vice-president of research at the U of L.
“The collaborative efforts of these researchers will pave the way for innovative solutions to combat these viruses and ensure the sustainability of our agricultural ecosystems.”
Patel says currently, there are no therapeutics available to fight the viruses.
“We need to know more about how these RNA viruses infect honey bees before we can develop tools to combat the viruses,” says Patel.
The U of L says honey bees are important to the agriculture industry and food production worldwide, as they account for over $7 billion worth of food, honey and other bee products in Canada alone. In 2023, Alberta was home for almost 40 per cent of honey bee colonies in the country, with Alberta bees producing the same amount of the country’s honey.
Officials add that the production of hybrid canola seeds in southern Alberta depends on managed honey and leafcutter bees. Since 2006 though, Canadian bee colonies have seen increased winter mortality rates, with over 50 per cent mortality in some regions.
The U of L says factors for that include parasites, viral and bacterial infections, weather conditions, forage availability, queen bee quality and the use of pesticides.
Viruses like deformed wing virus and sacbrood virus have proven to be a problem for bees. The U of L says these illnesses hijack a bee’s cellular machinery and can cause disease that spreads throughout a colony, which can lead to a severe drop in productivity and even the death of the colony.
The research project is anticipated to take two to three years, and the hope is to improve the understanding of how viruses interact with host proteins.
“The proposed work represents what we believe is the first focused effort on identifying honey bee proteins necessary for viral replication,” says Patel.
“This work will lay a strong foundation for further research work directed towards developing potential therapeutics against bee-infecting viruses. Training highly qualified personnel is also a crucial component of our interdisciplinary work.”
The grant funding came through the Agriculture Funding Consortium and was provided by Alberta Innovates and Results Driven Agriculture Research, as well as through the Canadian Glycomics Network Research Pipeline Program.
